Japanese MH-2 Shoulder Bot Is Just Plain Weird

This is one of the strangest robotic inventions I've ever seen. What you're looking at is a small shoulder mounted robot that you can wear. It reminds me of one of those good angels that sat on the shoulder of the cartoon characters of my youth. You know the sort that popped up when someone wasn't sure if they should do something good or bad.

The robot is called the MH-2 and has a roughly humanoid shape with no legs. It has a vaguely human face and appears to be wearing a hat that has a camera on each side. The idea is that friends or loved ones can virtually interact with little robot on your shoulder so you don't feel alone. In a nutshell, it's a telepresence robot that you take with you on the go.

The bot is able to mimic human actions as accurately and realistically as possible. The person operating the little shoulder mounted robot gets a 360-degree immersive 3-D view and stands in front of a motion capture device such as the Microsoft Kinect. The motion and gestures of the person controlling the little robot are mimicked by the bot's tiny metal arms. You can see the weird at work in the video below.

[via Spectrum]