"Waiting for laser command." The assistive robot El-E tells its user who can then point a laser on an object needed to be fetched. El-E was named as such because its creators led by Charles Kemp of Georgia Tech associated its solitary arm that moves up and down with an elephant (or its trunk, to be more precise).

El-E was developed to serve as a hands and feet of people with motor impairments. It's not yet ready to function in homes where there are various obstacles the robot would have to maneuver around and a whole array of objects it has to learn to pick up. Nevertheless, the people working on it are continuously improving its functionality by getting it to learn to pick up several everyday objects such as remote controls and cell phones.

According to Kemp, this may seem trivial to many but "to these folks [patients], it's a very big thing." El-E is 5 feet tall and has a rotating body attached to a wheeled base. Upon identification of a command, it will say, "Detected laser pointer." If it detects you looking at it upon object retrieval, it will bring the object to you directly, otherwise, it lays the object on what it recognizes as a table.

Check out Kemp's Healthcare Robotics Web site for videos of El-E in action.