For a few hundred rupees in Bangalore,a robot-run household

Chellamuthu says buddyHome is a self-learning system that takes three pictures of him every second,processes them to understand whether hes sleeping or smiling and activates certain features accordingly,recollecting all the information from the cloud based on Windows Azure,Microsofts cloud platform at night to perform better with each day.

Besides security and entertainment features,one of the buddyHome modules enhances his magazine-reading experience by ascertaining his interest in a particular story or picture from his facial expression and pulling out videos on the subject to play on a projected screen. In a video he presented at Microsoft Tech-Ed India 2010,when he reads an IPL advert in a magazine,it offers to book tickets for the next game.

Now Chellamuthu is working on a hand-gesture-recognition system for the speech-impaired that will translate sign language into words.

Chellamuthu is also working on integrating into the system an autobot that can communicate real-time. If Im not on my seat and my boss sends me an instant message,wont it be cool if it can take my place and reply to him? he says.