Book-reading Robot

Great, it seems that us humans are getting lazier and lazier by the moment – that the Ninomiya-kun robot for instance. This 1-meter-tall, 25-kilogram aluminum-framed robot was developed at Waseda University’s Information, Production and Systems Research Center (IPSRC), and is able to read out stories from a book, letting dad ditch his bedtime story teller role to his kids as the Ninomiya-kun substitutes dad’s place so that he can continue zapping aliens in the living room on the Xbox 360. The character recognition software is installed on a computer in the robot’s backpack, helping translate text into spoken words that are then played back by a voice synthesizer.