Japanese robot dogs barking up wrong tree

[Mulboyne]

SMH: Get real about robots, Japan told
...Joe Engelberger, the father of modern robotics...emerged exasperated from a visit to the international robot show in Tokyo..."These are toys that are being made...Nothing serious. Just stunts. There are dogs, dolls, faces that contort and are supposed to express emotion on a robot"...It was pointless, expensive and unnecessary for Japan...to tinker with trivial inventions like robotic house sitters that rang to say there was a burglary going on, he said...What the $US8 billion robotics industry needs is for engineers to design practical robots for personal care. So why isn't more work being done? Mainly, Mr Engelberger thinks, it's because everyone is immersed in needless research and companies are distracted by the uneconomic quest for the humanoid, which he derides as toy making.

[Taro Toporific]

[American Oyaji]

They are out there Taro. Just not available for civilian usage yet.

[Mulboyne]

Photo: Asahi

I'm all in favour of this kind of development. This is a TMSUK IV serving sake outside Daimaru in Fukuoka.

[kurohinge1]

... This is a TMSUK IV serving sake outside Daimaru in Fukuoka ...

Life imitates art.

This is R2D2 serving drinks ...



Surely an android "Cougar Girl" will soon appear at every bar - and bourbon sales will skyrocket!

[Mulboyne]

Guardian: Will machines for the aged herald the age of machines?
At the recent international robotics exhibition in Japan, Joe Engelberger blasted the Japanese robotics industry for wasting time and money making humanlike robots. He saw "nothing serious. Just stunts. There are dogs, dolls, faces that contort and are supposed to express emotion on a robot. They are just toys"...But not everyone shares Engelberger's view. Professor John Gray, a robotics expert based at Salford University, thinks that trying to create a humanoid robot is as useful as trying to get a man on the moon. "It was by taking on such an enormously difficult scientific challenge that a lot of spin-off technologies were created," he argues...more...