Robots Can Learn Much From High-Tech Playthings

By MICHEL MARRIOTT

t the annual Toy Fair last month, the huge annual show in New York where the toy industry promotes its newest creations, robots were everywhere.

Tiger Electronics, a division of Hasbro, showed off no less than two dozen interactive robotic toys that it plans to unleash next holiday season. They include a free-ranging turtle and other automatons for the fish bowl, as well as a gleaming, robotic baby that coos while responding to touch, sight and sound. There were plenty of robotic toys from other manufacturers, too: more dogs than you can throw a stick at, joined by cats, birds, mice, bugs, dinosaurs and even potted plants.
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But robotic toys, experts say, may help usher in the day, in the not too distant future, when more practical, utilitarian robots are common around the house. The clever use in toys of microprocessors, memory chips, sensors, servo motors and advanced software, like the sort that makes voice recognition possible, is pointing the way to vastly more advanced robots that can work with humans without intimidating them.


"Toys are just the tip of the iceberg in what is coming," said Wayne Walter, a founder of the Laboratory for Cooperative, Autonomous Microsystems at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Personal Robot PaPeRo



It's smaller, lighter and processes much improved performance capabilities.

It's a stand-alone personal robot!

Enhanced conversation capability

Capability as a research platform

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NEC :: Personal Robot PaPeRo
Papero Specifications




height: 385mm

width: 248mm

depth: 245mm

weight: 5.0kg

battery duration: 2 - 3 hours

battery charge: 2 - 3 hours

number of recognized phrases: about 650 phrases

number of speech phreses: about 3000 phrases



[input]

eyes: 2 CCD cameras

ears: 3 microphones for sound direction detection

1 uni-directional microphone for speech recognition

patting sense switch: senses your tap or press on the head

stroking sensorsenses your stroke on the head

ultra-sonic sensors: 5 sensors around its body (front: 3, rear: 2)

floor sensor: detect a hole

lift sensor: detect being lifted



[output]

feet: 2 drive wheels (front)

1 free wheel (rear)
max. speed : 20cm/s
head: up-down, left-right

sound: 2 speakers

face: 8 LEDs in eyes

9 LEDs in mouth

2 LEDs in cheek

2 LEDs in ears



[other interfaces]

remote control signal transmitter: transmit TV remote control signal

video and audio output: connection to TV

Internet access: wireless modem connection

Personal Robot PaPeRo

In January 1997, we at NEC commenced the 'Personal Robot Project' to seek out the possibilities of developing personal robots for use in the home. After much research and development, we produced our first generation prototype, 'Personal Robot R100' in July 1999. R100 with its ability to recognize people, understand voice commands and communicate with its users gathered much public attention as R100 showed many new possibilities in many aspects of our lives.

But we didn't stop with R100; we pursued in our research focusing on the interaction between human and robots and completed the next generation prototype, 'Personal Robot PaPeRo' in January 2001.


The name 'PaPeRo' is taken from 'Partner type Personal Robot'.
We plan to conduct further research and development based on NEC's new robot 'PaPeRo'.[...]