Abstract: A robot has a generally cubic body portion on propulsion elements. The robot turns its head in accordance with a remote person turning his head, and also presents, on a display representing the face of the robot, a full-face image representing the person even when the person is being imaged in profile.

Abstract: An audio-video recording and reproducing apparatus equipped with a hard disk drive is provided, which is capable of reproducing audio-video data recorded in its HDD and reducing the power consumption significantly while keeping a stable data reproduction. Since data transfer rates from a HDD to a buffer memory are high enough than data transfer rates from a buffer memory to a reproduction section, there is a time period in which the data transfer from the HDD to the buffer memory can be stopped during the data reproduction. Taking advantage of such time period, the HDD is put into the dormancy state, and the CPU controlling a data transfer from the HDD to the buffer memory is put into a dormant state simultaneously. Therefore, the HDD and the CPU are put into a dormant state intermittently during the data reproduction, thus an average power consumption can be reduced.