Sharp Corporation
RoBoHoNIn the fine tradition of Aibo, Qrio, and Pepper, Sharp’s RoBoHoN is a delightful consumer-friendly robot that walks, talks, and yes, even dances. But this latter-day Robosapien has one big advantage: It’s also a smartphone, meaning it can not only make and take calls, but also harness all the other features of a connected device. Like a Siri on steroids, RoBoHoN’s voice- and facial recognition capability has the vast resources of the cloud to make sure it’s accurate, encyclopedic, and up to date. Its built-in pico projector can play everything from YouTube videos to multimedia messages (MMS) to the proper food layouts onto a plate for aspiring chefs. This robo-phone isn’t going to save the world, and it’s certainly not the only way to stay connected today, but it has quite a gee-whiz factor. In a world of same-old, same-old smartphone designs, RoBoHoN stands out as surprising and delightful.