Mitshubishi announces the release of Robot Wakamaru. This robot is designed to be a companion around the house and is able to fully interact with its owners via speech with over 10.000 words in its vocabulary. Appart from being able keep a chedule for its owner there is not much usefullness in it. It cannot clean or cook for you and cost a whooping 15.000 dollars. It is only available in Japan right now.

and what this thing actually for,apart from showing the others that you have enough money to spend them for this?

Well it's a start of home robotics, seeing how Japanese are weird, from time to time, I'm pretty sure they'll find a market for this robot...

Hey - it's a huge walking/talking Tamagochi!!! :sick:

They arrived to control the world and put us in small battery shaped boxes!


*Stops watching Matrix*

from what I understand they are mainly for company. They don't do a whole lot. Basically it is a research project that is trying to raise some money by marketing these things. It has to be said this has a high "cool" factor. If only they could answer the door. Just think about it, someone rings your door and your robot opens asking if it could be of some assistence.

Without the cleaning out the cage bit, though.:D

This reminds me of a robot from Rocky 4 - remember the one they bought for Pauly - so he wouldn't be alone...

't Sounds alot like Honda's Asimo.

It can't clean, it can't cook, it has around 10.000 words in its vocabulary and it looks bland... if only it had smoother curves it could compete in Miss universe competitions! (this was too easy)

Sorry for going completely off topic, but Stroggy's post reminded me...

Lmfao, nice pic.
And why does Japan get to have all the major techno stuff, while we only have Mc Donalds...and Bush....<_<
And I dunno which is better, the robot, or one of them fancy toilets they have over there...

That's because they invent all that stuff. Back in school, I learned that Japan's economy's based upon importing raw resources (as they don't have them themselves) and exporting full-fledged products. If they didn't do as much research and development, they wouldn't be able to compete with the rest of the world, making their economy sink into oblivion.

Nope it's the US, and Western Europe that invents most of the stuff, it's Japan that perfects it ;)

Japanse folks are weird.......

Talking about future, the USA Army laboratories (The DARPA if i remember correctly) developed a laser gun for their jet fighters! Now they need only to build Tie-Fighters and X-winds...

That CNN headline was quite incorrect.
Firstly lasers for military use have been around for a few years now (and it wasn't an invention made by the US solely, either) and it's military use is, at the moment, still entirely defensive, as the laser can't be use as a real weapon. It is used to destroy missiles launched by enemy targets (just like the bigger lasers now)
I'm sorry but I've been following this for some time now and it is really annoying when CNN or other newssources publish such a highly incorrect article.

No lightsabers for me, then? :cry:

Hungary was the most "inventive" in and after WW2. Did you know that almost the half of the Manhattan Project (invented nuclear fission and, sadly nukes :( And what was the first country the "little boy" was dropped? Japan... Sorry guys :( ) was consisted of hungarians, or people originated from Hungray? And we had some serious inventions in the past. Just look up the "martians" in the wikipedia in the research faction. There was a saying in that time, that hungarians came from Mars, becouse one country can't possibly give out this many geniuses :D

Okay, self-esteem big time, sorry

Well if you're going to follow that logic you could also say that most of the hungarians working there were jews that had fled Europe and they were directed by Oppenheimer, who was also jewish. Furthermore 22% of all nobel prize laureates were jewish, while the global percentage of jews is as much as nihil compared to other population groups.

See... anybody can praise their own nationality or identity.

Or claim that the jews've rigged the Nobel prize :bleh:

And given Arafat the nobel peace prize!? Yah, right.

And Fermi, who discovered the basics principle of the atomic bomb, was italian!

See what happens if a religion doesn't stand in the way of science (but on the other hand there's... nah, I'll just shut up).

Lets get back on topic people.

The US started off as a country by doing that. Britian hated them for it and started taxing them....


Only now it is cheaper to let another country do the tinkering, and with how many hours a week those kids go to school over there...


Laser development is still way into the drawing board stage, and big lasers won't be able to protect US cities from ICBMs or Ballistics from space for a long time to come. I think it is more likely we will develop a lightning gun before we successfully perfect a laser weapon.

The japaneese are awesome....
like half of my friends are asian, 2 or 3 are japaneese....

I know why the Japanese are building these humanoid robots :ph34r:
Just check out next year's model asimo
http://www.dfnt.net/t/photo/extra_img/asimo04gundam.jpg

:twisted: World Domination , they want payback for WW2 LOL

But seriously this new robot has a battery life of like 2 hours, and they cant match the intelligence of a 2 year old. Besides the human design with exception of the hand is just not very good. The body design of insects for example is far superior

It sounds like an expensive version of the annoying Bonzi buddys you used to have on the computers years ago.

At least it can remind you to pay bills

Time to send in your robot payment Mr Moneybags.