ROBO-ONE Helper Robot Contest - Part 4 of 4

=Continued from Part 3 of 4=

Last but not least, here are two cute robots that took part in the competition.

One is TOKOTOKOMARU developed by Team TOKOTOKO. TOKOTOKOMARU usually wears a kimono but this day it had a Halloween costume on.

 

And it changed its costume during a demonstrative fashion show.

The robot Kumataro made by Team MSS (MSS stands for 'mo-sugu sanju' meaning "I'm almost 30!") was supposed to look like a bear going shopping with a robot on his shoulders. The bear had an ultrasonic sensor which made a cart and a smaller bear follow him. It was very cute as if they were all going shopping together but unfortunately I didn't get that part with my camera.  The following is how Kumataro was being operated.

After the competition, one of the store clerks commented "In the beginning I kind of broke out in a nervous sweat because I didn't know how I should interact with the robots, but at the end it was fun and I was happy to be able to lend a hand." "I can now imagine the day when a robot will really come to my store to shop," said the other.

Says one of the judges Sadahiro Arai, Manager of Tsukumo Robot Kingdom (a robot specialty retail store in Akihabara), "Perhaps us store clerks will be replaced by robots sooner than the shoppers."

Yoshinori Haga, Manager of the Advanced Technology Team at Bandai and one of the organizers of this contest, said that there were two things that happened in the past couple of years that made this kind of competition possible. One is the fact that the hobbyists' humanoid robots have become larger in size and secondly the advancement in the remote control systems. These two factors combined, "you start to become able to do really interesting stuff with these humanoids."

So are any of these robots going to be commercialized anytime soon?  There were no talks about that during the event. Haga is quick to acknowledge that there are still lots of issues to overcome before any shopping robot can be productized. But "we need to stretch ourselves with a higher goal. Or else we won't make improvement." 

=END of ROBO-ONE Helper Robot Contest article=