Work Vs. Play
It’s a question anyone might ask about a potential live-in partner.
Should your household robot be cool? Or practical?
Consumer electronics giant Sony Corp., which last week unveiled the sleek and diminutive SDR-4X, which can sing in vibrato and dance with fluid or funky motions, says robots ought to be entertaining.
But auto maker Honda Motor Co., which showed off the latest version of its Asimo robot at a luncheon with foreign reporters Tuesday, says such machines should one day perform useful tasks for their human masters.
“Sony is basically an entertainment company,” Toshi Doi, president of Sony’s Digital Creatures Laboratory, said at a news conference. “So it’s natural we would develop a robot for entertainment.”
Masato Hirose, Honda’s chief engineer in charge of Asimo’s development, had a different view.
“It is in the end a machine, a tool,” he said.
Sony and Honda, both founded by charismatic postwar entrepreneurs and considered among Japan’s most innovative companies, are at the leading edge of developing humanoid robots for home use.
Sony’s SDR-4X, bigger and better than the 3X unveiled a year and a half ago, sought to steal the spotlight from Asimo, which Honda already is leasing out to IBM Corp. and other companies as a high-tech receptionist and hospitality robot.
“Researchers are always aiming at making useful robots, but the risk of harm increases when there’s direct contact with humans,” said Masahiro Fujita, a senior manager and scientist in Sony’s digital creatures group.
“There’s very little danger with an entertainment robot.”
Doi said robots performing such tasks as caring for ill or disabled persons would not necessarily need a human form or the ability to walk.
Like Sony’s hot-selling Aibo robotic pet, which uses much of the same software, the appeal of the SDR-4X is its personality, he said.
“It has emotions,” he said. “It has instincts.”
Drawing from its vocabulary of 60,000 words, an SDR-4X said to a guest in a high, squeaky voice: “Please hold still for a minute while I memorize your face.”
It also showed off its ability to walk on uneven surfaces, get back up when it’s pushed over and come when it’s called.
Although Honda’s Asimo also is still used primarily for entertainment, its creator hopes it will someday be a useful household companion.
That’s why the Asimo is 4 feet tall--more than twice as tall as the SDR-4X--despite the technological challenges posed by taller robots.
Hirose said 4 feet was the minimum height a robot needed to move effectively around a home, given the height of such objects as tabletops, doorknobs and stairs.
“If you are going to have something that can move with ease in a human environment, then it is better to design the robot like a human,” he said.
Its future roles might include nighttime security guard or helper for the elderly.
Honda now leases Asimo to businesses for $152,400 a year, but Hirose said that by the time he retires in a decade or so, he hopes it will be cheap enough for him to buy one for himself and nimble enough to fetch him a beer when asked.
Sony’s Doi said he expected the SDR-4X will be priced about the same as a luxury car.
And while it was just working prototypes in the song-and-dance quartet that performed last week, he was hopeful that the SDR-4X would be ready for a market debut by the end of the year.
