Keepon The BeatBot

When I saw this little guy, I just had to write a little something about him - the BeatBot named Keepon. He’s so cute and sort of reminds me of the Nintendo character Pikachu, the famous yellow character with the pointed ears you see in the Pokemon anime and video games. But I guess realistically, he more looks like a yellow snowman.

Keepon is a small yellow robot with four motors, rubber skin, cameras for eyes and a microphone for a nose. He is designed to interact with children (or children at heart) by communicating attention and emotion. He’ll respond to any visual or aural stimuli, such as waving your hand in front of him, or just singing some music at him. When you interact with him, it’s almost as if you’re dancing with him since he has four degrees of freedom. He can rock side to side or bob up and down (up to 15 mm).


Keepon was developed by Hideki Kozima from the National Institute of Information Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan, and is currently being used for research on social development and communication.

Another robot in the works is Roillo. He has similar traits to Keepon, but will be a lower cost.

Unfortunately you cannot purchase Keepon or Roillo yet, but in the meantime, check out the website for more information and catch a video of Keepon in action: http://beatbots.org