It looks good, but still a little out of my price range.  Willow Garage has made available a one-armed version of their PR2 robot, the PR2 SE at $285,000.  It has the looks you would expect from a robot and is backed up by an open-source community delivering capabilities to the robots.

I also like the look of their Texai remote presence robot – it would make a great tourist guide for travellers visiting a high-tech city of the future, or bringing crowds of attendees to a booth at a business convention.

Willow Garage’s press release is here: http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2011/08/10/announcing-pr2se

James.