Speecys and Sega Toys to come out with new communication robot

 The founder and CEO of Speecys, Tomoaki Kasuga, was in Silicon Valley to give a presentation at TiEcon 2009. He is seeking 10 million dollars in funding to expand his business of developing and selling communication robots.

 During his stay in California, he made public that his company has teamed up with toy maker Sega Toys to jointly commercialize a new robot by the beginning of 2010. It is not clear at this point whether the new robot will be a humanoid or not. But what is clear is that it will have the capability to hook up with the network to download all sorts of information using voice command. Speecys has come up with a system to enable that - watch the video below.   

 In the future, Speecy's cloud computing system will allow advertisers to send personalised ads to the robot users. "Think of it as a new friendly IT device. Friendlier than the PC." says Kasuga-san. The new robot is targeted to be in the 200-500 dollar price range. 

 Speecys had been working on the NNR-1, but according to Kasuga-san, they are now focusing on the project with Sega. 

 Below is a photo of Kasuga-san doing a demo at Tiecon.