So what would happen if that little bastard ET (yeah I am that old school) mated with the Amazon Kindle and their freaky robotic offspring was midwifed into being by some MIT student out of the bowels of some Hong Kong factory? What you'd get is Autom, the cheesy ET headed robot with a Kindle looking touch-panel on the front, that speaks in a 90s synthetic "female" voice and does little more than spew inane encouragements to stay in shape. It doesn't hear you btw, you have to use the touch pad to feed it answers. Its creators claim that the robot is more effective than a "character on the screen" and other impersonal surrogates like iPhone apps because it's positive, supportive, helpful, and people bond with it. Speaking of bonding with it "“ despite its synth talk and lack of any fem features its creator continues to creepily refer to it as a "she". At $500-$600 bucks a pop, it seems like another overpriced novelty trying to scratch a non-existent itch, Personally I put more weight into cheesy joke scales that scream "Get off me you fat *bleep*" than the Autom "“ less expensive and more entertaining. BTW, calling this thing a robot is an insult to today’s technology – the fembots coming out of Japan these days will wrestle you to the ground and wear you down to a stub, or so I hear. This tech is so retro that it makes Teddy Ruxpin look fresh. Now where are we going for lunch?
Video after the break.