In a recent post I talked about Saya the receptionist robot and the implications for human employment in the service sector. She’s being featured at the current NEDO Expo in Aichi, Japan. Check out their Next-generation Robot Development page for pictures and descriptions of her, the childcare robot, the street-cleaning robot, the security guard robot, and more. In June they’ll have demonstrations of 65 different robots, which are organized into the following task areas (I’m not quite sure what these all mean – the accompanying PDF is in Japanese and I can’t read it – but this list should give you the basic idea).

• Network Robotics, RT Middleware (8)
• Robot for Interaction between Humans and Robots (7)
• Outdoor Robot for Skilled Work (8)
• Outdoor Robot for Special Environment Work (10)
• Medical Welfare Robot (10)
• Partner Robot (8)
• Performance Robot (5)
• Humanoid Robot (9)