The University of Brussels and the ANTY Project are developing a friendly, plush hospital robot for diagnostic and therapeutic use with children. Despite getting burned on the Teddy Ruxpin thing a few years back, Bill Gates is involved in underwriting the prototype for the robot they call Probo:
The ANTY project will be used to accomplish three important goals concerning different areas of interest. The first and main goal is to develop and build the robot to enlighten the children’s stay in the hospital. A second goal is to use the robot as a multidisciplinary research platform for technical, medical, social and psychological studies. The third goal is to use the project to motivate students and to stimulate new technological innovation.While there's no official position from the developers on the topic of circumcision, I think Probo's opinion is as plain as the nose on his face.
Probo an intelligent huggable robot [with an uncut penis for a nose] [vub.ac.be]
Bill Gates backs Belgian huggable robot [ehealtheurope via boingboing's new gadget blog]
Uhh.. Probo?
DT, This has got to be Alf's cousin, or maybe brother given the close resemblance. What's up with the cut off stomach?