Contact:
Neva Garcia
Evolution Robotics
310-920-0544
neva@evolution.com

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Yujin Robotics Selects Evolution Robotics To Guide Their Home Robot, Jupiter

PASADENA, CALIF. – January 5, 2006 - Evolution Robotics, the leading provider of next-generation robotics technologies and component solutions, announced today that Yujin Robotics has selected its NorthStar™ product as the primary localization method for their home robot prototype, Jupiter. Jupiter has been used for pilot testing in ordinary households since the beginning of October 2005 and is one of the key milestones of a project organized by the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication ("MIC"). NorthStar is an infrared LED technology that enables any electronic product to know where it is in real time.

“We’re excited to be working with Yuijin Robotics on the Jupiter project,” said Paolo Pirjanian, president of Evolution Robotics. “With this project, NorthStar is now being used on real robots in real environments, proving its functions and performance.”

Jupiter is the first robot pilot in Korea being tested at a regular household environment where MIC uses three different types of robots and has a total of 64 units installed. The primary purpose of the pilot testing is to prove the Ubiquitous Robot Companion ("URC") concept proposed by MIC. The URC concept is a scenario where the robot is connected to a server through a broadband connection allowing functions to be preformed on the server side, thereby minimizing the stand-alone function significantly and reducing the robot client cost.

NorthStar is the world's lowest cost localization solution, enabling smart and intelligent navigation. NorthStar’s localization system is comprised of two components: NorthStar Detector and NorthStar IR Projector. The NorthStar detector uses triangulation to measure position and heading in relation to IR light spots that can be projected onto the ceiling (or other visible surface). Because each IR light spot has a unique signature, the detector can instantly and unambiguously localize.

Yujin Robotics incorporated a NorthStar sensor at the top of Jupiter and has designed the accompanying projectors to be aesthetically pleasing to better fit home environments. Jupiter’s voice recognition function allows users to give Jupiter voice commands such as "go to the living room." The robot will then travel to the living room autonomously using localization data given by NorthStar.

“Evolution Robotics plans to work closely with Yujin Robotics on the Jupiter project and will continue to improve NorthStar based on the feedback from this field testing, which will benefit NorthStar’s other applications such as robotic vacuum cleaners that can perform "smart" vacuuming as opposed to the inefficient random movements used in current robotic vacuums,” continued Pirjanian. Released in March 2005, NorthStar is being used by numerous customers for production development and R&D. For more information on NorthStar, please visit: http://www.evolution.com/products/northstar

About Evolution Robotics
Evolution Robotics™ (www.evolution.com) partners with brand leaders to make their products smarter by providing solutions for vision, autonomous navigation and intelligence. Evolution Robotics’ mission is to make everyday products smarter through innovation in visual pattern recognition and robotics. The company’s technology platform includes ERSP®, the standard Robotics OS, ViPR™, the gold standard in visual pattern recognition and NorthStar™, the world’s lowest cost localization system for autonomous navigation. These can be licensed individually or acquired as part of Development Kits. Evolution Robotics has provided unique and differentiating functions for products such as robotic toys, robotic vacuum cleaning products and educational robots. The company also develops visual search engine technologies and partners with mobile service companies to develop mobile marketing and mobile commerce applications for camera phones. Additionally, the company markets LaneHawk™, a loss-prevention solution for retailers that reduces inventory shrinkage through Evolution Robotics Retail, a subsidiary company. Evolution Robotics is an operating company of Idealab, a creator and operator of technology businesses.