Japan built Wakamaru and the USA built Roomba (please refer to refer to AI 6), which are two household helper robots with very different capabilities.
Wakamaru was built with basic dialogue and failed.
Roomba was built without dialogue and succeeded.
Wakamaru fom Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, is a waist-high bot with a canary yellow exterior and limpid eyes. It can recognize 10,000 Japanese words, identify eight family members by face or voice, remind you to make an appointment or take your meds and, if somebody breaks into your house, send photographs of the intruder to your mobile phone. It cost $15,000 and filed in the market.
Roomba, by contrast, looks more like an appliance than a robotic friend but with a starting price of $130 has sold over 3m machines.
The Japanese, who have long been fascinated by the robot as android, are concentrating on making machines that look and act like human beings.
U.S. firms, on the other hand, have eschewed the flashier android approach and instead are emphasizing products that, like Roomba, are narrowly targeted to specific tasks like mowing lawns, cleaning pools and taking patients' vital signs.
The stakes are high (please refer to AI 1) with the market being worth US$182 by 2018.
A low cost dialogue delivery capability designed to add material value is likely to become a big differentiator in the robotic wars.
