[NEWS] New humanoid HRP-4 is SO COOL and only $300,000

 Just in from Kazumichi Moriyama who let us know via Twitter that the new humanoid robot HRP-4 will be sold to universities and research institutes for 26,000,000 yen - which today is a little over $300,000 with the yen still being high.

 HRP-4 - just annouced in Japan yesterday- was developed by Kawada Industries and AIST. Moriyama-san was at the press conference. Kawada plans to start selling HRP-4 worldwide starting January 2011 according to it's press release.

 You gotta see this video. It's amazing that this robot is  5 feet tall (151 cm) and weighs only 86 lb (39 kg).

 And it's interesting because the robot looks both male and female. Like when it makes the body-builder pose at around 1:12 in the video, it looks masculine. And at 2:22 when it puts it's right leg forward, it looks feminine. At least to me. I also realized that it has more degrees of freedom than myself when it reaches for it's back at 1:51. I can't do this because I am getting old and I have a frozen shoulder.

 Here is a longer video where you can see it following faces and a pink ball in the end.

 Are we getting closer to this?