Toyota’s robot damp dreams
Toyota says its robotic fembots are its “future” ….even though humanoid robots can’t do any real work and won’t able able to for decades. And, who says you cannot find drugs in Japan?
Toyota says robotics will become key business
AP Business – Sunday, December 23, 2007: ….Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said robotics will be a core business for the company in coming years. Toyota will test out its robots at hospitals, Toyota-related facilities and other places starting next year, he said…...more…
Any kind of humanoid robot, even a clunky ”Star Wars” C-3PO is damp dream since autonomy of acting on their own is major problem. Simply stated, it’s impossible to just say, “tidy up the living room” to a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot. 
You have to clean up the room first before the robot can vacuum the area since the robot has no idea what “tidy” is or what to do with objects that are out of place besides just vacuum around them.
Without “consciousness” robots are just spot welders, bolt tightening arms, burger flippers, spray painters, and factory drones that can swivel dexterously back and forth in a pre-programmed for assembly line work. They’re expensive toasters—one-trick-ponies. It will be many decades before anthropomorphic robots are going to be sentient. How Toyota plans to make money at selling overpriced Roomba vacuum cleaners and receptionist fembots that cannot answer anything but the simplest phone directory type questions is a mystery.
The above photos are of the Actroid fembot from my previous 3Yen report, My Girl in Tokyo.
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