Wrote about Robts several years ago when I encounterd them at the Santa Clara Convention Center. So here it goes;
“Everything is so high-tech,” said 10-year-old Kingston. His father, Stanley Xu, a manager at HP, was impressed by the exhibits. “Robots can do what people can not,” he said.
“Robotics could be bigger than the car industry [in the future],” said Han Wung Yi, an engineer with Daewoo Electronics. A visitor from Vietnam said that robotics would be implemented everywhere and in anything. “Currently robotics is a small industry, compared to computer and chip industries, but if venture capitalists determine to put their money there, robotics will grow huge,” said Nilesh Parate, general manager of PCBFabExpress.
The Robotic Industries Association said that the robotics industry posted strong numbers in the last year, with North American orders up 28 percent in units and 15 percent in dollars.
The 5-foot-tall robot HRP-2, made by Kawada Industries of Japan, was developed for the Humanoid Robotics Project that was sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. It is designed for “outside and human/robot cooperative” task experiments. It was the first time overseas for the humanlike robot.
Despite its popularity, HRP-2 is still not for sale. “Only for R and D,” said Yoshida Komatsubara, president of Kawada Industries in New York. The development of the robot began in 1999 in collaboration with Tokyo University.
Onsite there were plenty of high-school robot club members. “We can make better robots than the exhibitors. We built our robot in just six weeks,” said a Woodside high school student.
“What we are watching now is very similar to the computer industry decades ago,” said Sam Tachibana. In 2007, 4.1 million robots will be in use, according to UNESCO forecasts. The robotics fever at the convention center, affecting children and adults alike, may just be the beginning. ロボット産業は車産業より大きくなるか。トヨタなど日本企業は民生分野で優勢だが。
