Cute Robot Called Me Fat! OH JOY!

Too awesome. And it just might work, who knows?

The brainchild of Cory Kidd, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a doctorate in human-robot interaction, Autom hits the US market later this year, retailing for about 500 dollars.

The 80-billion-dollar US weight loss market has already been targeted by Nintendo with its Wii Fit and My Weight Loss Coach games but Kidd is banking on Autom offering dieters a more personalised way of using technology to slim down.

It is a so-called sociable robot, a new generation of robots that adapt their behaviour in order to interact with humans.

I for one welcome our new slimming robot overlords. I just hope they make it hackable so I can put some properly motivational vocabulary in there. Only when kids aren’t in the room, of course.

Autom’s been doing some weed already, just look at those pupils.

“Don’t forget to bring a towel!”

Sounds awful. If I have to track my diet, exercise and weight then I’d rather it just be me and a document on my computer. Instead I have to go and confess to a robot that I was bad and ate a cupcake after lunch today, so it can browbeat me for my poor choices? Or alternately its all positive and upbeat and says “let’s keep working together!” after I admit I ate two cupcakes and took in 5000 calories today. No thanks.