Air conditioner manufacturer Daikin Industries came out with a mascot robot for it's air purifier products. Other than dancing in the commercials, the Robo Pichon-kun has a built-in chemical sensor and will start punching the air when it smells smoke and other unhealthy particles. The robot was made by Vstone, a robotics start-up which is making a lot of headlines these days.
The Robotics Industry Development Council (RIDC) of Fukuoka Prefecture in the Kyushu region of Japan announced that they have developed a cleaning and information service robot called RIDC-01 that will be working at the local government as well as other public locations so that the "residents in the community can get used to seeing and interacting with robots in everyday life." The new robot was made by tmsuk Co., KITHIT Co. and Kyushu Institute of Technology. RIDC is a collaboration between government, industry and academia trying to incubate a robotics industry in Fukuoka.
Systems integrator Message One, Inc. has developed the Operator Plus - a system that can determine the emotions of people talking on the phone by analyzing their voices. They call it an Emotion Analysis Engine. It is meant to be used by companies that want to improve customer satisfaction with their call centers but Japanese writer and editor Akihiko Kobashi points out in his column on Nikkei Business Express that this system may be used for robots too. It would be useful if robots understood the emotions of the people that they deal with so that they can act accordingly.
Electronic components manufacturer Murata Manufacturing Co. developed a bike riding robot called "Murataseisaku-kun." The name comes from the company's Japanese name - Murata Seisakusho - and the "kun" at the end is a title we use when calling male children/friends (f.e. Ken-kun, Suzuki-kun). It's such an easy name within Japan but impossible overseas. But we'll probably find more and more robots with names that end in a "kun" or "chan" (for girls) or "san" (most common title) because they sound friendlier to the general public. You can see some pictures of Murataseisaku-kun at this site. He can ride backwards too.
Just found out that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has extended its offering of its home robot wakamaru. The company wanted to sell the talkative robot to 100 households in the Tokyo metropolitan area for 1.575 million yen (about $13,000 at today's rate, excluding the service fee of $90/month), by the end of October. The Japanese website says that this was due to "request from customers that wanted some more time to consider the purchase." MHI has teamed up with 6 other Japanese companies to sell and service the wakamarus and hope to start selling nationwide in the not so distant future, but it will be interesting to see how much demand there is for a robot that is priced as much as a car. It can send an email to you at work "There's an intruder in the house!" when it's in security mode.
