- Title: JAPAN-DANCING ROBOTS 100 robots dance to music
- Date: 21st January 2015
- Summary: VARIOUS OF ROBOTS STARTING TO DANCE VARIOUS OF ROBOTS DANCING IN UNISON
- Embargoed: 5th February 2015 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Japan
- Country: Japan
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA248Y8TXLSGW2MT9VH3QS3O9RV
- Story Text: One hundred robots danced in unison to the tune of music on Tuesday (January 20) in a fashion reminiscent of the mass games.
The 34 centimetre-tall, one-kilogram robot, named 'Robi', was designed by Tomotaka Takahashi who manages the robotics company Robo Garage.
If you think you've seen this robot somewhere before, you are right.
Takahashi designed a similar robot called Kirobo, which blasted off to the international space station last year, as well as the Panasonic Evolta robot.
But you can't buy Robi off the shelf. You have to build it.
Toy and publishing company DeAgostini Japan dismantled the robot into 75 pieces and put them in a weekly magazine on Robi.
The reader is asked to re-assemble the robot independently with a weekly installments of parts, one per week for one-and-a-half-years starting in 2013.
After testing an arm here and building a leg there, you get a fully formed Robi.
A full complement of robot parts does not come cheap at 140,000 yen ($1200), if you bought all weekly magazines.
The company has done so to make the process of building and forking out the money for the diminutive robot less of a steep wall to scale.
To date, about 60,000 Robi's have been completed, according to the company.
Takahashi believes that robots that talk will be the next hot thing since the mobile phone and even foresees a union of the two.
"I think this Robi will shrink in size and have the functions of a mobile phone and will be able to be put into the breast pocket where you can can hold a conversation. I think such an era will come and I want to make it a reality by 2020," said Takahashi, 39, who is a big fan of the Japanese comic book Astroboy.
Takahashi also responded to the common fear that robots are being designed to replace living companions.
"This is not supposed to replace anything. This is a robot meant for communication and to act as a go-between for people and society. This is not something to replace human labour or act as a replacement for a pet," Takahashi said.
With one of the world's fastest ageing and shrinking populations, however, the Japanese government hopes robots are the answer to a vanishing workforce.
A draft government growth strategy obtained by Reuters calls for a "robotic revolution" that would increase the use of robots in agriculture 20-fold and double manufacturing use.
The country has also recently released a string of robots which talk and mimic human behaviour.
Last year, mobile phone operator Softbank started selling "Pepper", a human-like robot for personal use.
Japan's overall robotics market was worth about 860 billion yen ($8.38 billion) in 2012 and is forecast to more than triple in value to 2.85 trillion yen by 2020, according to a trade ministry report in 2013. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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