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So just by a show of hands, how many of you all have a robot at home?

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Not very many of you.

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Okay. And actually of those hands,

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if you don't include Roomba how many of you have a robot at home?

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So a couple.

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That's okay.

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That's the problem that we're trying to solve at Romotive --

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that I and the other 20 nerds at Romotive are obsessed with solving.

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So we really want to build a robot that anyone can use,

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whether you're eight or 80.

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And as it turns out, that's a really hard problem,

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because you have to build a small, portable robot

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that's not only really affordable,

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but it has to be something

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that people actually want to take home and have around their kids.

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This robot can't be creepy or uncanny.

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He should be friendly and cute.

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So meet Romo.

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Romo's a robot that uses a device you already know and love --

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your iPhone -- as his brain.

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And by leveraging the power of the iPhone's processor,

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we can create a robot that is wi-fi enabled

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and computer vision-capable for 150 bucks,

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which is about one percent of what these kinds of robots have cost in the past.

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When Romo wakes up, he's in creature mode.

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So he's actually using the video camera on the device to follow my face.

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If I duck down, he'll follow me.

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He's wary, so he'll keep his eyes on me.

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If I come over here, he'll turn to follow me.

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If I come over here -- (Laughs)

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He's smart.

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And if I get too close to him,

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he gets scared just like any other creature.

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So in a lot of ways, Romo is like a pet that has a mind of his own.

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Thanks, little guy.

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(Sneezing sound)

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Bless you.

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And if I want to explore the world -- uh-oh, Romo's tired --

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if I want to explore the world with Romo,

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I can actually connect him from any other iOS device.

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So here's the iPad.

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And Romo will actually stream video to this device.

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So I can see everything that Romo sees,

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and I get a robot's-eye-view of the world.

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Now this is a free app on the App Store,

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so if any of you guys had this app on your phones,

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we could literally right now share control of the robot and play games together.

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So I'll show you really quickly,

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Romo actually -- he's streaming video,

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so you can see me and the entire TED audience.

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If I get in front of Romo here.

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And if I want to control him, I can just drive.

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So I can drive him around,

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and I can take pictures of you.

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I've always wanted a picture of a 1,500-person TED audience.

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So I'll snap a picture.

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And in the same way that you scroll through content on an iPad,

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I can actually adjust the angle of the camera on the device.

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So there are all of you through Romo's eyes.

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And finally, because Romo is an extension of me,

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I can express myself through his emotions.

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So I can go in and I can say let's make Romo excited.

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But the most important thing about Romo

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is that we wanted to create something that was literally completely intuitive.

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You do not have to teach someone how to drive Romo.

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In fact, who would like to drive a robot?

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Okay. Awesome.

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Here you go.

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Thank you, Scott.

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And even cooler, you actually don't have to be

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in the same geographic location as the robot to control him.

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So he actually streams two-way audio and video

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between any two smart devices.

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So you can log in through the browser,

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and it's kind of like Skype on wheels.

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So we were talking before about telepresence,

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and this is a really cool example.

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You can imagine an eight-year-old girl, for example, who has an iPhone,

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and her mom buys her a robot.

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That girl can take her iPhone, put it on the robot,

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send an email to Grandma, who lives on the other side of the country.

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Grandma can log into that robot and play hide-and-go-seek with her granddaughter

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for fifteen minutes every single night,

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when otherwise she might only be able to get to see her granddaughter once or twice a year.

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Thanks, Scott.

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(Applause)

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So those are a couple of the really cool things that Romo can do today.

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But I just want to finish by talking about something that we're working on in the future.

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This is actually something that one of our engineers, Dom, built in a weekend.

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It's built on top of a Google open framework called Blockly.

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This allows you to drag and drop these blocks of semantic code

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and create any behavior for this robot you want.

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You do not have to know how to code to create a behavior for Romo.

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And you can actually simulate that behavior in the browser,

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which is what you see Romo doing on the left.

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And then if you have something you like,

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you can download it onto your robot and execute it in real life,

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run the program in real life.

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And then if you have something you're proud of,

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you can share it with every other person who owns a robot in the world.

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So all of these wi-fi–enabled robots actually learn from each other.

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The reason we're so focused on building robots that everyone can train

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is that we think the most compelling use cases in personal robotics are personal.

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They change from person to person.

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So we think that if you're going to have a robot in your home,

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that robot ought to be a manifestation of your own imagination.

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So I wish that I could tell you what the future of personal robotics looks like.

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To be honest, I have no idea.

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But what we do know is that it isn't 10 years or 10 billion dollars

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or a large humanoid robot away.

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The future of personal robotics is happening today,

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and it's going to depend on small, agile robots like Romo

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and the creativity of people like yourselves.

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So we can't wait to get you all robots,

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and we can't wait to see what you build.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)