Meet Valerie, she's a domestic android

Meet Valerie.

Valerie is a domestic android. Valerie will clean your house, change light bulbs, wash the dishes, do the laundry, check the sports scores for you, book plane tickets and call the police if there's an emergency. She speaks English but more importantly, understands English and hence be programmed by non-programmers. Valerie will be on sale by Christmas 2004 for US$59,000 with a two year warranty. Gizmo spoke with her creator, Chris Willis.

The Personal robotics industry may still be in its infancy, but ten years from now, Chris Willis expects that 10% of the American population will have some form of personal robotic assistant. Willis' Androidworld.com is tracking the development of the industry and he is in the process of developing his own domestic android prototype named Valerie, for sale by the end of 2005.

Willis' site lists and links to 60+ major android projects around the world and a further 50+ entertainment android projects, so it's fair to say that he is keeping in touch with the competition and the prospects for the industry.'Androids are going to be the best thing since sliced bread,' enthuses Willis. 'You get a 24 hour security guard, a helper which will do most of your household chores and help you organise your life and one which will work tirelessly 24 hours a day for the price of the electricity required to provide power - it's a very compelling proposition, and the technology is all there to create it now.

''I'm expecting that in 10 years we'll see a huge market developing and that the US, Europe and Japan will each account for around a third of global sales. By that time, I expect 10% of US households will have a robotic assistance of some kind, and that will only be the beginning.

Despite the ambitiousness of the Valerie Project, Willis remains optimistic of playing a major role in this future marketplace despite the millions being invested by the likes of Honda, Fujitsu, Sony, Toyota, Takara, Omron, sega, bandai, NEC, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Tsmuck, Sanyo and Epson.

'There may be some economies of scale in the Japanese marketplace because a large amount of expertise is concentrated in a small geographical area, but I'm not so sure that the expertise is being shared. There's also an enormous amount of work being done elsewhere in the world and individual systems are being developed for many of the systems which make up an entire android system, and there's a lot of opportunity to leverage off that work.

The Valerie prototype is set to be one of the most advanced ever shown to the public when it is released later this year. 'We have the hands done already and our hands have 40 degrees of freedom,' said Willis, comparing it favourably to Honda's Asimo which has 35 degrees of freedom in its entire body. 'The hands are more than 30% of the entire project for us because Valerie has to be able to perform many complex tasks,' said Willis.

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