27 Nov, 2008
Wakamaru debuts in a play while Paro goes to Denmark
Wakamaru, the boy-faced robot from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, debuts in a play staged at Osaka University in Japan. Entitled “Hataraku Watashi” (I, Worker), the play, written by playwright and Osaka University professor Oriza Hirata, explores the relationship of humans and the robots that are tasked to assist them in their everyday chores.
In the 20-minute play, focusing on a human couple and their robotic house-helpers, one of the two robots suddenly loses his motivation to work. The conversation between humans and robots (who quip, “It’s hard being human”) elicited laughter from the audience.
Wakamaru was developed at the Osaka University with research founded by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Meanwhile, Denmark has announced an agreement to purchase 1,000 Paro, the therapeutic robot, for use in welfare facilities for the aged throughout the country. Popular with patients, the elderly and children, Paro is a human-interactive robot that responds to sound and touch with eye movements, motion and purrs and is reputed to have a calming effect on its holders.
Paro was designed by Takanori Shibata of the Intelligent System Research Institute of Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), a research institute.
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