If you find it hard to encourage your kids to clean their teeth properly, then RoBoHon is here to help. Sharp has announced a new app for the robot designed to improve dental hygiene awareness.
Working in tandem with the smart toothbrush GUM Play by Sunstar, RoBoHon will tell you how to brush your teeth correctly. There are four modes, including another one is a game where the player interacts with RoBoHon to get rid of bacteria in its mouth. RoBoHon will also play music to accompany your brushing.
RoBoHon will also store and analyze data (for example, brushing times and dates) about your dental hygiene and brush usage, and then use this to make recommendations. The app content will be available for RoBoHon and GUM Play users from August 31st.
The miniature robot, which is a mobile phone version of the Robi, originally created by Tomotaka Takahashi as a build-it-yourself kit purchased piece by piece in magazine issues, has become one of the most successful robot products for general consumers in Japan purely in terms of profile and media exposure.
New content and apps will continue to be developed for the RoBoHon, though the jury is still out for now on whether it can be anything more than a gimmick.
Unfortunately, the RoBoHon requires a mobile phone contract to work properly as it is effectly a kind of smartphone operating via a cloud service. In lieu of the real thing, though, you could get the self-assembly action figure version.
RoBoHon is part of a whole wave of compact and cute robots currently under development or released for regular consumers to buy. They might not present particularly groundbreaking ideas regarding the utilisation of robots in everyday life except for some IoT applications, but they look charming and are able to win over fans.
Other examples include the Toyota Kirobo Mini Robot, Pepper and Hatsune Miku iDoll.
