Mr. Roboto

So I guess the Japanese have this thing for robots. It’s actually kinda cool. I mean I’ve been in Japan for almost nine months, and I haven’t really seen much here that I couldn’t find in America or any other civilized nation. However, during my recent trip to Tokyo, I was impressed by the Japanese development of robotics. Now, I’m not talking about robotic arms that perform a duty on an assembly line (of which Japan does have quite a few). I’m talking about robots that look like humans or like other animals. Pretty much anything that doesn’t need to be plugged in.

I went to the Sony building in Tokyo. It was filled with Sony stuff, and rather reminded me of Best Buy: Cool stuff, but nothing new. Nothing new, that was, until I came across Aibo. Aibo is a robotic dog that sits and pants and wags its tail and will respond to a pat on the head or other such stimuli. These things were pretty neat. I saw a demonstration where four dogs danced in unison. The dog also came with a little fetch stick and a ball. However, for $3000 I prefer a pet that I wouldn’t get bored with and put away in a box after a month (this is why I won’t get a bird, stupid animal right….). I think I’ll stick to real dog, much cheaper and more loyal. A robotic cat, however…….


Aibo 

Next I went to the Museum of Emerging Technology…. pretty cool place. There I saw Asimo, the humanoid robot from Honda. It was fairly scary the human-like movements this robot could do. It was actually almost graceful, more graceful, in fact, than I am (I know, I know… not hard). This robot was cool. He came out, waved, said something in a high squeaky Japanese voice (not doubt meant to appeal to the kids) played Rock, Paper, Scissors with the kids, and walked backwards, disappearing behind a descending garage-style door.


Asimo 


Though those were the only robots I saw, other cool robots include the information robot, the custodian robot, and the security robot at the World Expo. (Man, I got to get to this Expo thing; it’s just down the street) So yeah! Robots are cool!