Robovie: Intel Atom-powered PC, also a robot

Meet Robovie. A robot with a webcam for a face, an Intel Atom CPU for a heart, and in addition to being able to walk, he can run Windows 7.

True, he'll also cost you about £3,000. But what you're looking at is a robot with all the remote-controlled movement capabilities of the MechRC, with the bonus that it's also a flippin' PC.

His backside offers two orifices -- an Ethernet socket, and VGA output for hooking him up a monitor. There are USB ports on the shoulders for connecting Robovie to a hard disk and keyboard, and Wi-Fi is built-in as standard.

Mental, huh? For a robot, getting an Atom chip is like a human going in for a heart transplant and being told, "Sorry, we're out of hearts so we gave you hydrogen fuel cells. Hope that's cool."

Though it seems the 1.6GHz Atom chip only powers the PC functions of the robot. Its leg and head movement is handled by a lower-powered secondary ARM chip, which connects wirelessly to the handheld remote control you need to make him walk and move his webcam-enabled head around.

If you want one you'll need just under £3,000 and a flight to Japan where they're built to order by Vstone.