Twendy-One is a robot that speaks and helps out around the house. - Photo courtesy twendyone.com image:35399:0::0

Shigeki Sugano, a professor of mechanical engineering at Waseda University, leads the Twendy-One Robot Project. The robot is named Twendy-One for the 21st century edition of a previous robot model, Wendy, which had soft hands and fingers that mimicked human flesh and touch.

The video is not embeddable but you can see it at this site, where it shows how Twendy-One helps to wake a man up from sleep, including lifting him from bed. The robot also chats with him and helps him cook a meal. It toasts the bread and takes the bread from the toaster without breaking it. It is able to take ketchup from the fridge, assemble the meal, and serve it to the table. The robot shows it has an excellent visual and touch system that helps it do these tasks with ease.

Sugano demonstrated this robot to the media and said:

It's the first robot in the world with this much system integration…It's difficult to balance strength with flexibility."

The robot is 1.5 m (5 feet) tall and weights 111kg. The robot took the team seven years and several million dollars to create. It is able to speak much better than any other robots built to date. This robot also has 241 pressure sensors in each silicon-wrapped hand, making it very flexible.

Sugano, however, cautioned that it would take some more time before they become commercially available. Right now they are tethered with cables and only have 15 minutes of battery life. To be used commercially, they will need a longer life. The computer system that Twendy-One currently uses also overheats after every demo or application, so that has to be corrected as well.

I imagine the price point will come way down when these robots are mass produced, as the current price tag runs at about $200,000 USD.

I think the robots could be useful in hospitals and to help the elderly. Japan has the highest elderly population in the world.