Do you want your robot to smile every time it sees you? Or you want it to whistle and say "hello gorgeous" whenever it sees a girl, just like the stereotypical Italian movie character? Well, there's an app for that -- in an app store exclusively for robots.
It's the RoboAppStore, the only app marketplace for bots. Launched in 2011, it has just received a $250,000 investment from Grishin Robotics, to jump start the world of software apps for robots. The RoboAppStore allows bot owners to download apps for consumer robots like the NAO Robot, the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner, or Sony’s Aibo robot dog.
Most of these robots have proprietary operating systems and software which makes developing apps a little harder than making them for the iPhone or Android operating systems. But the developer's hope is that in the future more bots will have open source operating systems, like the ROS (Robot Open Source) platform.
The apps add functionalities to robots, which sometimes have a very limited set of capabilities. Other than making your NAO Robot sound like a character from Jersey Shore, you can also make it read your RSS feed, sneeze, look disappointed or even dance to Michael Jackson's Thriller. If you have a Roomba vacuum cleaner, you can make it dance to different tunes, or control it remotely from your Android phone.
To learn more about the RoboAppStore, check out the video above.
