While it’s generally becoming more accepted that exercise is a good thing that we should all do more of, the good folk at Toshiba are still designing with the couch potato very much in mind.

This typically Japanese-cute and anthropomorphic little fellow is ApriPoko, a household robot who learns the commands that your remote controls make so you can trigger them by talking to him:

“ApriPoko sits in the living room and waits for you to use a remote control. When its sensors detect infrared rays emitted by a remote, the robot speaks up: “What did you just do?” it asks. Tell ApriPoko what you did (”I turned on the stereo” or “I changed to channel 321,” for example), and it commits the details to memory. Then, next time you want to turn on the stereo or change the channel, simply tell ApriPoko and it transmits the appropriate IR signal directly to the device.”

We may not have our long-promised robot butlers yet, but ApriPoko should at least take on the duties that most of us relied on our younger siblings to perform … [image lifted from linked Pink Tentacle article]