At first glance a robot that looks like 2 fury tennis balls stuck together may not seem all that special, but this little fury wonder has just been named in the top 10 robots of all time! No the awards officials haven’t completely lost the plot. My Keepon (which is the name of this little critter) has a huge following with hundreds upon thousands of YouTube videos, amassing over 4 million views!

So how did such a simple looking robot find such fame amongst the more technologically advanced robots available on the market, the story behind it is somewhat special indeed.

The designer of Keepon is Hideki Kozima, who developed the robot as a social interaction tool for autistic children. He found that the simplistic looking robot could encourage more interaction and eye contact than human beings could with the children and over the last few years Keepon has been used as a learning tool amongst schools.

Hideki put videos of his social experiments on YouTube and not one to miss a trick, a huge toy company came along and said they’d like to create a consumer version of the little robot thanks to it’s growing online popularity, low and behold My Keepon was born and it’s set to be a huge smash indeed with the manufacturers donating a proportion of profits to autistic charities.

My Keepon has two modes, dance mode and interactive mode. In dance mode he will listen to the beat of any song and dance along to the beat, completely in time. No dance is ever the same though thanks to some clever computing so even if you play the same song twice, whilst dancing in time to the beat he will pull out some new moves to everyone’s delight!

In interactive mode he will respond to touch and sound, turning to face you when you speak, nodding along and bobbing his head when patted. My Keepon becomes more than just a robot, he’s like an interactive pet that will undoubtedly become part of the family.

Buy Now From: