For people suffering from blindness, a highly trained seeing eye dog is a welcome companion when it comes to getting around. RED the robotic dog, its name an acronym for Reading Eye Dog, seeks to offer the same kind of comfort to budding readings and the reading impaired.

Hold a book up for RED to see and it'll read the words on the page out loud for anyone to hear. What's more, a screen on the back of the robo-dog allows viewers to follow along as RED reads, visually matching the highlighted words with RED's voice.

RED is just a concept right now, but it's a nifty idea and no doubt any classroom of children would love to have its very own robotic, reading dog. It'd also be a pretty sweet replacement for the audiobook.

Onomy Labs, via Red Ferret