14 DAY TRIAL // The South Korean Government wants a robot in every Korean home by 2020, according to the Times. The Ministry of Information and Communication announced a test project for this fall, called "Ubiquitous Robot Companion" (URC), that will include 1,000 households and 40 kindergartens.
There will be five types of wheeled robots with prices ranging between $1,000 and $2,000. They should be able to clean up homes, care for pets, read to children and identify visitors. The robots' activity will be monitored by the ministry via internet in order to check for bugs. Half of the robots will be remote controlled using cell phones.
The Korean Government also plans to put such robots into 200 post offices around the country. The office robots will come in "male" and "female" models: the male will serve as a guard and will be armed with a projectile net that it can deploy to immobilize troublemakers, and the female will help customers and display entertaining video clips to people waiting in line.
The robots are so cheap because only the robots movement and navigation technology are inside them. Their 'intelligence' is on remote governmental servers and the robots download the necessary information when they need it.
"In a nutshell, URC robots just provide hardware with the ability of action while most software comes from the broadband through the wireless Internet. That is the secret how robot prices can go south", said project manager Oh Sang-rok.
It seems that if this project works well, the Korean Government will have a great tool for keeping the entire population under surveillance. But who would want to buy a robot that is remote controlled by the government and which has its entire 'intelligence' on a governmental server?!