stuffed stuff: Keepon

I already have a bento to post next, but before that I want to post some non-bento related stuff I was meaning to blog a little while back. (before I got busy with Halloween madness)

October 10th was my boyfriend’s birthday! We went out with our co-workers to a shabu shabu place in the East Village in NYC. Everything tasted soooo good. His birthday presents were still on the way, so I decided to make something to give him at the dinner the day before.
There was one character he’s been asking me to make a bento of, and that’s Keepon. The first time I saw Keepon was on youtube. I thought it was just another cute toy from Japan. Then I saw it on WIRED and learned what it was.

Stuffed stuff: Keepon
Created and stuffed: October 2009
“Keepon is a small yellow robot designed to study social development by interacting with children. Keepon was developed by Hideki Kozima while at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Kyoto, Japan. Keepon has four motors, a rubber skin, two cameras in its eyes, and a microphone in its nose. Its simple appearance and behavior are intended to help children, even those with developmental disorders such as autism, to understand its attentive and emotive actions.” (from Wikipedia)

He may seem like a cute dancing toy, but he is a high-tech $30,000 robot. $30,000 was a little out of budget, besides BeatBots (where Keepon was created) only sells Keepon to professional institutional users.

So I decided to make it on my own. I used yellow fleece to make two small spheres and sewed them together. For his eyes and nose I cut felt out and glued them on. It wasn’t difficult at all, but I sewed the two sphere pieces wrong, so the seams on the sides ended up looking crooked. This is what happens if you don’t pay attention when you work on a simple project. T_T

Well, even though I messed it up a little bit, my boyfriend LOVED it. He couldn’t keep his hands off of Keepon. He’d make him move with his hands, like he does in the video. He has his Keepon on his desk and is always playing with him. I’ll probably make another one when I get more fabric. (Now I’ve got a cute little plastic nose that is perfect for Keepon too.) But until then his Keepon will keep him (and me) entertained.

I usually don’t put youtube videos on my blog, but I’ll make an exception for this little bouncy yellow fellow. The video is from Marek Michalowski’s youtube channel, he is the founder of BeatBots where he created Keepon with Hideki Kozima. Check out more info on Keepon (where he’ll make an appearance, what he does for research, etc…) on BeatBots.

Without further ado, I give you Keepon dancing in the music video of “Don’t You Evah” by Spoon! (Please check out other videos he uploaded on his channel to see what Keepon’s up to!)

Tagged as: BeatBots, Hideki Kozima, Keepon, Marek Michalowski, plush toy