New Toyota Robot Plays the Trumpet
Posted on: Thursday, 11 March 2004, 06:00 CST
TOKYO, (AFP) -- Japan's top carmaker Toyota has unveiled a trumpet-playing robot -- its first humanoid machine -- in a bid to catch up with robot technology frontrunners such as Honda and Sony.
Toyota Motor Corp. showed off its walking and rolling virtuoso robots to the media at a Tokyo hotel as it announced the outline of its robot development project.
The 120-centimeter (48-inch) tall walking robot played "When you wish upon a star" with a trumpet as a presenter held a microphone up to the instrument, swaying naturally to the rhythm of the famous song from the Disney cartoon film Pinocchio.
The robot, with what appeared to be an artificial green leaf stuck behind its left 'ear', bowed to the audience and waved its arms to respond to applause following the brief performance.
"We are determined to drive foward the Toyota Partner Robot project by putting together what we have cultivated in automotive development and production," Toyota president Fujio Cho told the news conference.
"I'm confident that this will be a symbol of Toyota Group's technology," Cho said.
Toyota plans to form a "robot band" to play music at the 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, central Japan, where the carmaker's is headquartered, the president said.
The robot development race is highly competitive in Japan, the world's leader in the technology.
In 2000, its rival Honda Motor Co. Ltd. unveiled ASIMO, the world's first two-legged walking robot, and Sony Corp. revealed its QRIO, the world's first jogging robot, in December.
Earlier this week QRIO appeared for a photo opportunity conducting the Tokyo Phiharmonic Orchestra as it performed part of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
It was not immediately clear whether QRIO would be conducting Toyota's robot musicians in future as well.
Computer giant NEC Corp. has released an interactive robot with "humanlike" expressions, which can speak 3,000 phrases, while Hitachi Ltd. has unveiled a birthday cake-shaped robot that sucks up and throws out dust automatically.
The robot market in Japan is estimated at some 500 billion yen (4.5 billion dollars).
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