Segway Robotics has announced exciting new developments at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, USA this week. First unveiled a year ago at CES as a prototype robot based upon a Segway miniPRO platform, this latest 'alpha release' development of the Segway Robot is called Loomo (learn more and watch a video here). Conceived as an 'open platform' to encourage wide adoption and the development of a multitude of uses, Loomo comes with a software development kit (SDK) and features built-in voice recognition (English and Chinese), loudspeakers and a hardware expansion bay. Out of thousands of applicants, Segway Robotics has carefully chosen four initial development partners to whom Loomo is already shipping:

• BMW (autonomous driving)
• Intel (who's RealSense gives Loomo its 3D vision and depth perception)
• MIT Smart Centre (medical and elderly care)
• Stibo Accelerator (enterprise, consumer and retail applications).

In this excerpt from an article that appears in Robotics Tomorrow, a Segway Robotics spokesperson says:

"We believe the source of intelligence is innovation, and this robot is designed to be creative and innovative" said Sarah Zhang, Business Lead & Head Developer of Partnerships of Segway Robotics. "The idea of combining a personal transporter with a personal robot that will change people's lives is what we set out to do with this project, and we are thrilled to partner with some of the world's leading technology organizations to create a powerful computer that you can engage with in an unprecedented, three dimensional way."

When Loomo becomes widely available later this year the Segway Robot will offer a wide range of users - from researchers to businesses to home hobbyists - the opportunity to own, experiment with and actually deploy a capable, flexible, useful robot in ways we can't yet even imagine. Perhaps in anticipation of robots becoming more common, IEEE's Spectrum is featuring this fascinating video and transcript of an interview with a group of experts who are attempting to model moral behaviour, so it can be programmed into the robots we build to roll amongst us.