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.

Bandai bot lets Junior be Big Brother

Kids these days! Always playing fast and loose on the increasingly hazy border between toys and robots. If they're not building their own humanoids or cuddling with prefab pets, they'll be playing Big Brother with Bandai's latest home robot kit, NetTansor. Available in December for around $420, it's a mobile droid that gives users of all ages remote surveillance and telepresence capabilities through the Internet.

The diminutive NetTansor is basically a remote-controlled, programmable webcam with wheels, a microphone and a wireless LAN. It can also play back preset sound files, so little Taro can have fun surprising people at home through it while he's at school. The rover has image-recognition abilities too and will send photos and alert emails to a user's cellphone when it detects motion while in watchdog mode. It can also be used to relay voice messages or monitor pets remotely. You can easily program it to remind the kids to brush their teeth at night or have it carry out other simple tasks based on its AI abilities.

I think it'll be really neat when these things start rolling down the streets, riding trains and generally cropping up everywhere, like omniscient disembodied eyes. People could be in multiple places at once, interacting through them as a distributed entity. Say hello to the urban panopticon.

Look, but don't touch

I just caught this video of the latest Actroid gynoid from the animatronic Edisons at Kokoro. DER2's the cutest gyaru I've clapped eyes upon this side of Shibuya. 190 centimeters of Kitty'd-out fembot fatale. I am totally loving this machine.

Those who might be tempted to do more than just admire her (rentals are to start at around $3,500 for five days) should listen to the speech: "Touching me is sexual harassment," she quips. "Sorry!"

Ah, how cold she is! But totally befitting a maschinenmensch in the Brigitte Helm tradition. The Metropolis future is now.

"Her heart never changes; she hasn't got one." -- Tomorrow's Eve

Manoi: I'll take Manhattan

I had a great run in the U.S. promoting my book Loving the Machine. There was lots of interest in Japanese bots among the public and media. Manoi AT01, my plastic traveling companion seen here in New York, got a lot of stares. Lugging him around in a shoulder bag also gave me a bad back. Manoi is a hobby kit humanoid made by the good folks at Kyosho Corp. of Japan. But more on him later -- one highlight of the tour was playing robot dressup at Dark Carnival in Berkeley!