Friday, September 02, 2005

A Robot Guard Dog for your Diet

By Celeste Biever
New Scientist


A robot dog that monitors your daily food intake and exercise levels and warns you not to eat that cheesecake could encourage people to stick to their diets.


The health-conscious pooch connects wirelessly to the dieter's pedometer and an electronic diary of their eating habits, to calculate their daily calorie intake and expenditure.


While it may sound frivolous, its US developers hope the robot, a souped-up version of Sony's dog Aibo, could ultimately help in the fight against the western world's obesity epidemic.


The system is being designed by Cynthia Breazeal at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is famed for creating the emotional robot Kismet. It would use a pedometer, bathroom scales and a PDA connected by Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to gather information about weight, activity and eating habits that people generally have trouble calculating, remembering and reporting.


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