Sharp RoBoHoN SR-04M-Y

SR-04M-Y is the Wi-Fi-only member of the RoBoHoN range Sharp announced on 18 February 2019 and released on 27 February, sitting between the full LTE/3G SR-03M-Y and the seated RoBoHoN lite. Mechanically it is the same robot as the LTE model: 19.8 cm tall, walking on two legs, able to get up after a fall, recognising speech and faces, singing and dancing. The computing platform is identical too — Android 8.1 on a Snapdragon 430 octa-core with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage, an 8-megapixel camera, a nine-axis motion unit and an ambient light sensor, all fed by a 1,700 mAh battery that charges in about 130 minutes. What changes is the connection to the outside world. There is no LTE, no 3G and no VoLTE, so the robot cannot be a telephone; it works over Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS, which is enough for conversation, reminders, camera and the Cocoro cloud services but ties it to home or office coverage. Dropping the radios also takes the screen down slightly, to 2.4 inches, and the weight down to about 360 g — 35 g less than the LTE version. The practical argument is price. Sharp launched this model at 120,000 yen before tax against 180,000 for the LTE robot, and the current list prices are 145,200 and 239,800 yen; a Cocoro Plan subscription from 980 yen a month applies to both. For a buyer who wants the robot at home rather than in a pocket, SR-04M-Y is the same machine for roughly 40 percent less.

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