Toshiba Showcases Advances in Sophisticated Home Life Support Robot

Has announced further advances in robotics that take company closer to its concept of a "life support partner"-a sophisticated robot able to deliver human-centric technologies that provide assistance and support the elderly and young children in the home and in such public places as shopping complexes.

One advance enables a robot to distinguish particular voices from among many from multiple directions, and recognize the direction of origin, and interact with the speakers by responding to a repertoire of commands.

The other allows a robot to recognize a registered individual and to follow that individual and to follow that individual from place to place, even among groups of people.

Toshiba has developed two separate robots to showcase the new technologies and will demonstrate their capabilities at AICHI EXPO's "Prototype Robot Exhibition," at the Morizo and Kiccoro Exhibition Center from June 9 to June 19, 2005.

There is growing interest in the potential of home robots that can care for the aged and young children. Toshiba shares this interest, and is promoting development of human-centric technologies that will realize a "life support partner"
able to work naturally and effectively with people in the home and outside, in public places.

Such coexistence and interaction requires robots with sophisticated capabilities. Truly effective robots have to be able to recognize multiple individual voices and multiple instructions from different directions at almost the same time.

And if they are to be real partners, able to accompany people wherever they go, they have to be able to recognize and follow specific individuals. Toshiba's new robots draw on the company's advanced image and voice recognition technologies to showcase these capabilities.

The robot that can distinguish and recognize voices from any direction, "ApriAlpha_v3," also known as Apri sharp ear, integrates six microphones into its body to assure omnidirectional voice capture.

Toshiba's proprietary voice signal processing technology allows the robot to recognize the direction of multiple speakers and what they have said.

For example, a robot integrating this technology can respond to a person offering greetings and then go on to respond to a question from another person.


Source: www.toshiba.co.jp