Polaris Phone Rolls Self to Charger, Keeps an Eye on Users' Behavior

By Stuart Fox Posted 09.10.2009 at 10:40 am 4 Comments

Polaris Phone Docking System via Impress

Sure, your iPhone may play games, tell you where to eat, and surf the Internet, but can it tell you what you did the other day and how to do it better? Enter the Polaris phone, a new system designed by the giant mobile phone company KDDI and Japan's Flower Robotics.

The Polaris phone/robot is a three-part system that incorporates your phone, your television, and the robotic sphere seen above. The sphere contains speakers for the phone's music, and wheels that roll the sphere to the closest power source to charge the phone. The sphere's dock also links up with your television to display the detailed data about your life and behavior that the phone records (see below for a picture of a TV displaying the data).

Polaris Life Tracking System : via Impress

And what data does it record? Apparently everything. The phone follows where you go, who you email, what you buy, who you call, etc. Aside from telling you what happened after the fifth shot of tequila the other night, the phone also analyzes your habits for patterns, and gives out advice based on the data it collects.

The whole project is still in the prototype phase. The specifics of the data collection system, and the navigational skill of the sphere, need more work. However, the companies hope to have a commercial version of the system available by next year. Until then, I'll have to continue relying on my friends, not my rolling phonebot, to tell me what I did after I black out drunk.

[via Pink Tentacle]

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4 Comments

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tentacleTherapist

09/10/09 at 11:07 am

I wonder what sort of "advice" this robot gives-- are we talking a portable, rolling therapist, or the sidebar on Amazon.com that tells you what you should buy next?

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TechnoFreakFace

09/10/09 at 6:47 pm

first: INEFFICENT!!!
second: INEFFICIENT!!!
third: Must cost a lot!!!
fourth: I would never buy something like this!!!
fifth: I quote:
"The phone follows where you go, who you email, what you buy, who you call, etc."
Im sure there will be one happy camper of a hacker who breaks the encryption. Aaaand another way for government or the renagade secret police forces that noone in congress can still account for.

there have been speculation by FBI retirees that there are more or less than 20 multi-million dollar forces that arnt accounted for in any records.....what else is hiding in that obese bueracratic animal, I wonder

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NormanRogers

09/14/09 at 2:43 pm

It's not a horrible idea, if you live your life in the open, as opposed to masked or as someone that you are not. If your social networking status is "open" and you don't mind having the information out there, I don't see the harm in it. The device itself looks clunky; I'm certain they will shrink it down at some point.

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krashtestkitten

10/01/09 at 3:57 pm

You don't have to be an axe murderer to want privacy !! I have nothing to hide from Big Brother but I would still like the idea of having a level of privacy, (which is diminshing by the year), in my very simple life, I wouldn't want a robot tracking my every move, then telling me how to improve it, or have it check in with Big Brother, (under the guise of it charging), to tell them of my movements or whereabouts, who thinks up this scary kind of crap!