Robbie the Robot proves a perfect match for Joanne

He’s just 4ft 7in in height, bald, not much of a talker, and almost impossible to cuddle, but the new guy in Joanne O’Riordan’s life might just be the man of her dreams.

In fact, you could say Robbie was made for her. But then that’s exactly what Joanne, who was born without arms or legs, asked for when she addressed a UN conference two years ago and challenged engineers worldwide to build her a robot personal assistant.

The challenge was taken up by the School of Engineering at Trinity College, Dublin, which last year secured €50,000 from the UN agency, the International Telecommunications Union, (ITU) to work on a prototype.