Cindy Smart is "the first doll in the world to be able to read, tell the time and do sums" [1] (http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7010272%255E13762,00.html).
Created in 2003 by Bob Del Principe, Cindy Smart uses a camera on her overalls and a computer to read words (on a flashcard for instance). She can recognize "bad words" and will refuse to read them aloud.
The eagle-eyed Cindy follows in the path of other breakthrough toys like Chatty Cathy, whose pull-string statements shook up the doll market 40 years ago, or Sony's barking Aibo robot, which was the first to popularize voice command in the late '90s.
Cindy takes Aibo's innovations one step beyond: She not only follows instructions but intuits shapes, colors, and words — and remembers.
Buried in her belly, Cindy's 16-bit microprocessor — an upgrade from the toy industry standard 4-bit — compares the text with her database of 700 words.
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