Okay, it may not tuck you in. Japanese researchers have developed a literate, child-sized robot capable of reading old-fashioned paper-printed books. Japan, must be behind. I’ve had one for years. It’s called Granny.

Ninomiya-kun is a 1-meter-tall, 25-kilogram aluminum-framed robot developed at Waseda University’s Information, Production and Systems Research Center (IPSRC) and was unveiled on June 11 at a robot trade fair in Kitakyushu, where it entertained onlookers by reading fairy tales.

The robot reads by training its camera eyes on printed materials placed on a special book stand. Character recognition software translates the text into spoken words, which are produced by a voice synthesizer. They are working on making the voice more human.

[Pinktentacle]

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 12:12 pm and is filed under General. Be sure to subscribe to the Botropolis.com feed because it is really, really awesome. Have something you want to share? Please let us know.

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