Drinks at Asimo Cafe

I went to Honda's Tokyo showroom and had the pleasure of being served drinks by its humanoid robot Asimo.

Guests sit at tables in the office lobby equipped with touch-panel displays. There are two Asimos standing by at their charging stations. When they receive an order, they whir to life and bustle about like human waiters.

I selected green tea. Asimo carried out the order flawlessly - receiving a drinks tray from a human staffer, carrying to my table and depositing it, then bowing courteously and moving off. Other guests bowed to Asimo in return.

Perhaps the coolest thing was that it was largely business as usual at the office. Executives were coming and going, receptionists were greeting visitors and not too many people took much notice in the fact that there were two robots waltzing around the room serving tea and coffee.

Honda has always said it wants Asimo to be part of the everyday environment, and this was its most convincing demo yet.

Smallest humanoid a chip off the old block

I-Sobot, a new toy from Takara Tomy, has been launched as the world's smallest humanoid robot in production, certified by Guinness World Records. It's a 165 mm (6.5"), remote-controlled droid that walks, punches, kicks, does gymnastics and plays music. Its interesting features include 17 servo units, a gyro sensor for balance and the ability to recognize 10 voice commands. Not bad for $350.

I-Sobot also has a spoken repertoire of over 200 sound effects, words and cute asides like "I could go for an ice-cold can of STP." Funny, but its ancestor Omnibot from the mid-1980s (i-Sobot's name is actually "Omnibot 17μ i-Sobot") seemed to have more style, at least in the TV ads. He even makes a pass at a vacuum cleaner.

Humanoid learns to point, bow

A full-size humanoid robot that can communicate with natural human gestures and demonstrate some AI chops has been developed by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).

Researchers at the institute's Spoken Language Communication Group say it is the first robot in the world with nonverbal communication skills and multipurpose, high-level functions. The bipedal machine, which stands 155 cm (5 feet) tall, uses its artificial vision system to recognize objects in 3D and learn human gestures such as pointing and bowing, as well as their meaning when performed by others.

The scientists compare this to the way a child learns to communicate. No word yet on what the tin man calls itself.

NICT says it hopes the bot, which looks like an early Asimo prototype, will be used as an everyday caregiver for elderly people in the future as well as a helper robot in natural disasters.

Via Nikkei Net, NICT

Ghost in the machine

These creepy X-rays are imaginary robot skeletons that tmsuk, one of Japan's more playful robot manufacturers, is offering as wallpaper on its website. They feature the tmsukIV humanoid robot and the Banryu T73S robot watchdog. A caption in the wallpaper reads: "Robot-like people cannot make robots."

New robot ready for dirty work

The latest humanoid robot unveiled in Japan is nice and shiny but wants to get its hands dirty.

The HRP-3 Promet Mark II is designed to work in tunnels, disaster zones and other dangerous environments. Jointly developed by bridge-builder Kawada Industries, Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and others, HRP showed off its skills tightening bolts and screwing screws. Check out the funky video here - it also drops the driver with studied nonchalance. But then again it only has three fingers.

Rain- and dust-proof, the latest droid in the HRP series (for Humanoid Robotics Project) stands 160 cm (5'2") tall and weighs 68 kg (150 lbs). Mechanically, it is more sophisticated than the HRP-2, with 12 more degrees of freedom for a total of 42. This reflects improved grasping ability, a skill many humanoids in Japan lack. The robot can also operate autonomously or by remote control. Anime mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi (who worked on Gundam, Patlabor and Macross) did Mark II's exterior.

The developers plan to keep improving the HRP series with an eye to commercialization by 2010 at a cost of $80,000-150,000 per unit. Since the project itself grew out of a national scheme to create robots that could operate in Japan's many nuclear power plants, power utilities could be potential customers.

Humanoid for hire

Get your artificial receptionist/valet while supplies last. Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has announced that its humanoid communication robot Wakamaru is now available for rent.

Wakamaru is a sophisticated robot with vision, auditory and touch sensors. The rental project is aimed at businesses, hospitals and events, where the droid will do receptionist and guidance duties. Wakamaru can understand about 10,000 words, retrieve information or emails from the Net with its wireless LAN link, and do a mean upper-body aerobics routine.

The daily rental fee varies according to the lease length. For a lease of 1-5 days, it's 120,000 yen ($970), while 21-30 days is only 20,000 yen ($160). Shipping and management charges extra. The rentals will come with touch panels that can display venue maps and other info.

Robocandy

This, gentle reader, is robot omiyage.

Omiyage are souvenirs, a de rigueur gift for colleagues if you're a salaryman on a business trip. They're usually chocolates and the like.

Never little robot buns...until now.

Thanks to the new Robot Museum in Nagoya, which I finally visited. The organizers really did their homework and have put together a very impressive multimedia chronology of famous anthropomorphic machines fictional and real, from Hadaly of Tomorrow's Eve to Honda's Asimo and beyond. A highlight of the gallery is the actual Wabot 1, the first full-sale humanoid robot, developed in 1973 by Prof. Ichiro Kato of Waseda University.

The place is more than a museum. There's also an event space that accommodates visiting robots, as well as a large "robot department store" on the ground floor. Everything robotic, from toys and robot kits to t-shirts and candies, is on offer. Thousands of customers throng the aisles on weekends; a good chunk of them are gaijin.

The manju bun above is part of a slew of Robot Museum merchandise for sale. Comes in this here package.

The taste? Milky-sweet, with a touch of silicon.

Getting cuddly with Actroid

He has created the perfect woman. Her only flaw: she isn't human.
- Star Trek, "Requiem for Methuselah"

On a recent visit to robot maker Kokoro, I got a backstage tour of the magic and spent some quality time with their lovely lady android, mentioned in an earlier post. Actroid is a synthetic female, ultra-lifelike in appearance and movement. I'd seen her several times at various events, but at Kokoro I got to get up close and kick the tires, as it were.

Actroid is designed to work as a receptionist or emcee. The receptionist version sits in a sensor-laden booth and can answer questions in four languages, almost like a fortuneteller. Four receptionist Actroids gave directions to visitors at the 2005 Aichi Expo in Japan. The latest emcee version, Actroid DER2, stands on a platform, generally looks gorgeous and introduces stage acts. She's equipped with 46 servomotors and a repertoire of sassy comments, like "Please don't touch me -- it's sexual harassment!"

Never one to take "no" from an android, I squeezed the Charmin. Her skin is soft and smooth, though cold. Somewhat like a rubber chicken. With her winsome looks and totally gyaru wardrobe - she goes out in Hello Kitty t-shirts, a nod to parent company Sanrio - it's easy to overlook this shortcoming. All she needs is a little warmth in her silicone hide.

A mind would be nice, too. The wizards at Kokoro, however, are already working on this. A company official told me the firm is pursuing collaborative artificial intelligence research to make Actroid more humanlike. With warm skin and a sharper tongue, who knows what she'd be capable of?

Global revolution, methinks.