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TMSUK Robot Carries Your Bags

TMSUK has created a new shopping assistant robot. This service bot will follow you around autonomously, carrying your heavy bags full of purchases.


(TMSUK service robot carries your bags)

The robot will be tested at a shopping mall located in the Fukuoka airport in February of 2006. It turns out that British science fiction writer John Brunner wrote about a robot with a similar purpose in his 1975 masterpiece Shockwave Rider - the autoporter robot:

...he nabbed an autoporter and - after consulting the illuminated fee table on its flank - credded the minimum: $35 for an hour's service...

From now until his credit expired the machine would carry his bag in its soft plastic jaws and follow him as faithfully as a well-trained hound, which indeed it resembled...
(Read more about John Brunner's autoporter robot)

Read this one in various places, including Engadget.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/29/2005)

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