Sony, Honda animated on robots’ role – Tech News – CNET.com

By Reuters

March 19, 2002, 4:55 AM PT

It’s a question anyone might ask about a potential live-in partner. Should your household robot be cool? Or practical?

For consumer electronics giant Sony, which on Tuesday unveiled the sleek and diminutive SDR-4X that can sing in vibrato and dance with fluid or funky motions, robots ought to be entertaining. But for automaker Honda Motor, which showed off the latest version of its Asimo robot at a Tuesday luncheon with foreign reporters, such machines should one day perform useful tasks for their human masters.

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