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My Friend The Robot – Japan Shows The Way With The Latest Technology

TOKYO (dpa) – Asimo shakes its metallic hips in time to a rumba while fellow robot SDR-3X is so caught up in a soccer match that it falls to its knees with outstretched arms when things go well for the team.

No, these aren’t scenes from a sci-fi fantasy, but the first step towards a new generation of Japanese robots. In technology development labs across the Far East’s high-tech powerhouse, breathtaking innovations are gradually turning robots from assembly line drudges into our friends electric.

In the future, these astonishing steel beings will no longer have to slave in factories as their predecessors now do, but will serve people in everyday life. They will be companions who can supply support and assistance around the house or to the elderly and infirm.

Electronics giant Matsushita Electric plans to open a high-tech retirement home in Osaka province in December 2001: talking robot pets and internet access will be available in every one of its 103 rooms.

Sony vice-president Toshitada Doi rejoices that “the robot industry will be bigger than personal computer manufacturing.” Aibo, Sony’s famous robot dog, is his brainchild. On sale since 1999, 45,000 “dogs” have been sold for more than 2,270 dollars apiece.

A second generation of Aibos was launched recently in Japan: they look like a cross between a cat and a dog and can also display emotions. “These metal life forms will provide comfort for people and will be able to ease their troubles,” says Sony manager Doi.

Japanese high-tech firms see a golden commercial future for entertainment robots. The country leads the world when it comes to industry robots: at the end of 1999, economics publication Toyo Kezai claimed that 740,000 were hard at work worldwide, with over half of them employed in Japan.

Now the country wants to go a step further and create robots that can see, speak and feel, and release them onto the commercial market.

Doi recently unveiled Sony’s prototype SDR-3X in Yokohama, at the world’s largest trade fair for these kind of robots. Some 50 centimetres tall, the Sony Dream Robot can dance thanks to its 24 joints, it can play soccer and its new voice recognition technology means it can react to 20 words and compose answers.

Car maker Honda has also been at work and has created Asimo, a humanoid about 120 centimetres tall who can move almost the same way as a human made of flesh and blood can.

Though European companies have also been busy designing robots, to be used in space exploration for example, “only the Japanese want humanoids and robotic pets so much,” according to Professor Yoshiaki Shirai, president of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence.

In European literature and cinema, robots often end up posing a threat to humans, but in Japan’s animation and comics they have exactly the opposite image. As Toyo Kenzai suggests, this is probably one of the reasons why the country is so committed to robot design.

At the same time, these developments promise the Japanese handsome commercial rewards. NEC recently unveiled its R100 robotic egg: it can roll through your house, recognise human faces when called and then ask you what it can do for you.

Company plans for this miniature robot include its use as a remote control and a device that can read out incoming e-mails to you and your family. Toy manufacturer Takara has produced robotic fish and jellyfish which, it claims, will see to “the peace of mind of city dwellers in the 21st century”.

For the time being, however, these prototype creations and their various functions are supposed to merely get people used to the idea of living with robots in the future.

But experts believe that before humanoid beings like Honda’s Asimo can actually sit down at the dinner table or at an office desk, they have to become a little “more refined”: they say it is still to dangerous to let such heavy machines take care of the elderly or let them run about in the home.

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