New Tokyo museum robot guides look, sound human

By: 10 years ago

Android robot Kodomoroid speaks during a press event at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation Miraikan in Tokyo Tuesday, June 24, 2014. AP

TOKYO — The new robot guides at a Tokyo museum look so eerily human and are so perfectly smooth in speech they almost outdo people.

The latest creations from Japanese android expert Hiroshi Ishiguro are a female-announcer robot called Otonaroid, a girl robot called Kodomoroid and Telenoid, a hairless mannequin head with pointed arms that serves as a cuddly companion.

The robots with silicon skin and artificial muscles were shown to reporters at Miraikan museum today.

In a demonstration, the remote-controlled machines moved their pink lips in time to a voice-over, twitched their eyebrows, blinked and swayed their heads from side to side, although there were some glitches.

Kodomoroid read the news without stumbling once and regurgitated complex tongue-twisters glibly. Ishiguro said technological innovations made the smaller child-size robot possible.