Mitsubishi has developed a robot on wheels that will become a house-sitter, caretaker, nurse and friend for the family.

It has cameras and voice and face recognition capabilities that allow the machine to search for and follow voices, faces and movements. It links to the Internet and can send its camera images to mobile phones and computers away from the home. It can also be programmed to send e-mail if it hears a big noise or sees anything unusual in the home.