The latest robot to be unveiled by Japanese developers could soon be the talk of the town - literally.
Memoni, unveiled today at the Tokyo Game Show by toymaker Tomy Co Ltd, is a robot that can hold conversations with its owner, and is intended as a companion for the huge number of Japanese who live alone.
"It detects the human voice, it is the first robot in the world you can have a real conversation with," Haruhisa Ujita, who works in Tomy's new products division, said at the opening of the Tokyo Game Show 2001.
Resembling a large blue or pink alarm clock, Tomy hopes Memoni will prove the last word in companionship for people who either live alone, or have run out of things to say to their partner.
It has been conceived for the single, lonely office worker and single girls living alone, parents when the children have left home, or old age couples who need to have a conversation with somebody.
The irregular shaped device has a sort of a face made from an LCD display which can reproduce 20,000 different expressions, and its computer has a vocabulary of 20,000 words, but is capable of learning 3,000 more.
It can recall earlier exchanges to make real conversation.
Memoni will go on sale in Japan on October 24th, priced at 19,800 yen (£150), but Tomy has no plans so far to sell it overseas.
AFP