Pomi is a robotic penguin with a heartbeat that employs a rather interesting method in its human interactions: smell. Developed by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute in South Korea, Pomi (which stands for Penguin Robot for Multimodal Interaction) is governed by software that roughly approximates human emotions, and can change its heartbeat and emit two different scents based on how it feels.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute plans to use Pomi for commercial purposes as a robotic companion, and it'll be available in South Korea next month. It can interact with others by using voice recognition and a bevy different sensors, and can change its facial expression to make it more lifelike. Whether or not Pomi is such a great companion, however, depends on what those two smells are.

PhysOrg, via The Raw Feed