Wakamaru

Wakamaru is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' 100 cm yellow domestic robot, announced on 2 February 2003 and put on sale in Japan in 2005 at about US$14,300-15,000. It moves on a single wheel at up to 1 km/h, runs Linux for about two hours per charge and uses cameras, ultrasonic and infrared sensors to avoid people while speaking in a deliberately non-threatening childlike form. Mitsubishi ran a 100-unit test sale to Tokyo households, rented units as receptionists from 2007 and never released a successor, leaving Wakamaru one of the defining Japanese domestic robots of the 2000s.