Papero: parent in disguise

NEC Corp.'s childcare robot Papero, that lovable kitchen-counter appliance with eyes, has had its monitoring skills upgraded. Papero is a sophisticated robot with face, voice and obstacle recognition skills, tactile and ultrasound distance sensors as well as the ability to act as a mobile phone. Papero can also perform a little motorized jig on request.

In an NEC-NTT study this fall, parents will be able to send instructions by cellphone to Paperos at daycares in Tokyo and Yamanashi, telling them to sing, dance or read out their emails. Papero has no arms, so it won't be able to spank naughty children. Maybe it could be reprogrammed to deliver a well-placed headbutt. But I digress. Remote parents will also be able to take photos of their kids and store them on a blog site.

NEC began developing Papero about a decade ago as a robot that can play with kids while communicating with their guardians. The idea is the robot can entertain at daycare while parents keep an eye on their children through its eyes, and as such it combines autonomy with remote control and telepresence. There's increasing concern about protecting children from crime in Japan following some high-profile incidents.

I saw a roomful of Paperos playing with kids at the 2005 Aichi Expo in Japan, and they seemed to enjoy it, though interaction was carefully controlled by NEC staff. If I were a kid and given an advanced robot to play with, I'd be pretty peeved to discover it was a stoolie for my elders.

Speaking of which, studies by NEC have also found that old folks dig Papero too, leading the electronics giant to opine: "This may have been because they saw it as something familiar like a pet."

Natch.