Robots!

i4u writes "Sony introduces at the Robodex 2003 it's new version of the humanoid Robot SDR-4X. The Sony SDR-4X was introduced last year. The new version SDR-4X II has improved movement functions, safety functions and conversation capabilities. The new speech processor supports continuous speech recognition with about 20,000 words. The Sony SDR-4X II is about 580x190x270mm in size and weighs about 7kg. Sony Japanse Press-Release. See also the new robot Toshiba announced - the ApriAlpha."

Comments

Asimo touring the us

[gad_zuki!]

On a related note, Honda's Asimo is touring the US. Asimo groupies you know who you are.

Re:20k words

[Anonymous Coward]

By context he means that, since Japanese has very few syllables, and shorts words, many words may have differents meanings, depending on what other words they're used with. However I guess the robot recongizes 20000 words but doesn't usually "understand" them.

are you making this up?

[lingqi]

hmm. peachy

until you want to express "the faster the better" (does not translate literally, at ALL), "I bumped my head while entering the bath" (as far as i know there is no expressing for "while entering," as any japanese equivalent to english versions mean "while bathing"), or interpret "yorushiku" or "sumimasen" in their million and half meanings.

and I havn't even begun to count the thousands of "sound the exact same" words. a simple example might be "kanji," which, depending on the "kanji - chinese characters" can mean "kanji - feeling," or "kanji - work." try differentiating them.

I cannot imagine anybody who knows japanese well to even have a thought that japanese is easy to parse. AFAIK french is easy to parse - but I am sorry Japanese is far from it.

oh, and I counted 9 different "requesting somebody to do stuff" politeness levels the other day, not counting multiple politeness level combinations (verb + politeness suffix + request / command + politeness suffix for the request). Japanese people themselves hardly can differentiate which one is more polite than the other.

lastly, since all kanji characters have different meanings - you can more-or less guess the entire language if you have a sense of what every kanji means (this is why chinese people can usually understand what's going on in a japanese newspaper). so 20k words vs 20k kanji is very much different.

Re:are you making this up?

[davejenkins]

until you want to express "the faster the better"

hayai kagiri yoi.

"I bumped my head while entering the bath" (as far as i know there is no expressing for "while entering,"

hairu tochuu-- bath ni hairu tochuu atama wo butsukemashita. however, that's poor grammar. bath ni hairu tokoro atama butsukemashita.

As far as you know-- which doesn't seem to be very far. :-)

Open Pino

[SubtleNuance]

have a look at Open Pino for anyone interested in a Free Software implementation of a Robot - as well as Free (as in speech) design.

Who would buy a "stop them at the router, stop them at the blah blah" (remember that quote?) product from Sony?