Beauto, the DIY Japanese Robot

Although it’s not a Roomba in the sense that it can clean up your junk, this Japanese Beauto robot can be programmed just like a Roomba. It comes as a DIY kit from Japanese robot maker VStone, which includes the connectors and software to design the robot’s behaviour. The Beauto is similar to Lego Mindstorms in that it’s a relatively simple interface to design decently complicated AI interactions, but don’t expect to be able to make Johnny Five. Johnny 0.5, maybe. [VStone via Tokyo Mango]