From Wikipedia –

QRIO (“Quest for cuRIOsity”, originally named Sony Dream Robot or SDR) was to be a bipedal humanoid entertainment robot developed and marketed (but never sold) by Sony to follow up on the success of its AIBO toy. QRIO stood approximately 0.6 m (2 feet) tall and weighed 7.3 kg (16 pounds). QRIO’s slogan was “Makes life fun, makes you happy!”

On January 26, 2006, on the same day as it announced its discontinuation of AIBO and other products, Sony announced that it would stop development of QRIO.[1] Before it was cancelled, QRIO was reported to be going through numerous development, testing and scalability phases, with the intent of becoming commercially available within three or four years.

However perhaps Sony’s ambitions with robots is not quite over, this week Sony launched a new “robotic music Player”.  Rolly is shaped like an egg with flapping wings, built in speakers, colour lights that flash as it “dances”

Users can set the movements to the music via their computer and bluetooth devices.  It has 1 GB of memory.  Will a dancing bug out market Apple Shuffle?  Time will tell but is sure to be a hit with teens in Asia much like the dancing i-Dog. bot

Honda is also on the “humanoid” robot trail and looking to domesticate the robot to do our chores,with a little 130 cm chap call Asimo, who can climb stairs.   He has a work cycle of 1 hour between charging and is currently doing a celebrity world tour of Australia.  He is not for public sale yet so keep your credit card in your wallet.