Meet Romo, the iPhone-powered robot

New Delhi, May 27: With Romo, an iDevice-powered robot, you'll probably forget buying expensive, special-use robots. Romo combines smartphones with a mobile base, to do awesome things (telepresence, autonomous navigation, and machine vision). Here's a look at Romo.1. Romo the adorable Robot by Romotive uses either an iPhone or Android phone as its brains, and comes with a quirky personality and various interactive capabilities. The device can be controlled wirelessly by another device! Plus, it scares cats.2. All one has to do is download the free app and plug the device into the Romo base station and you'll have in your hands a new robot friend who is ready to play and learn. 3. There are three main modes for the Romo Robot: control, train, and program, each targeted at a different age group and requiring a different skill set. Kids aged 8 or 9 will be able to control the Romo robot by using a second iOS device to drive, view live images from the rear-facing camera and snap pictures. The Romo also uses the front facing camera to detect faces and move accordingly, like backing up if you get too close or turning to maintain eye contact. 4. With large bubbly eyes, four fang-like teeth, and a happy alien voice, Romo is cute and affordable at $150, and more than a toy.5. Romo uses computer vision, transmits sound and video two ways and can be remotely controlled over the Internet through Skype on wheels, if you will. And it can be taught new behaviors.6. According to Romo's creators, lots of people buy him for kids, especially because when kids can create behaviors for him and they try to train Romo how to do things, they are actually learning about computer science. It's a really cool way to get kids excited about technology and robotics and coding, they say.7. Romo has a bunch of autonomous behaviors, which means he can interact with his environment, he can track you, and he can also use computer vision not only to track your face but also to recognize different glyphs.8. Future functionality include a watchdog mode for security applications, and more advanced behaviors built around image processing like face and edge detection.