More Wacky Japanese Stuff

[ZenGum]

From here.

Cleaning grimy highway rest stops is a job barely fit for humans, but never fear: the disturbingly cute, talking Lady Bird robot will begin scrubbing Japanese public toilets in 2009!

Lady Bird was conceived and built by a consortium of robotics companies commissioned by the West Nippon Expressway Company Limited (NEXCO).

Lady Bird features obstacle sensors that help it avoid collisions with restroom fixtures and the occasional user. Speaking of the latter, Lady Bird is designed to be cute, friendly and helpful - this is Japan, after all. It displays a smiling face and a pair of stubby antennae that enable a very unique feature: speech recognition capability via a built-in voice synthesizer. Lady Bird can make conversation if spoken to!

Don't get too excited, you won't be engaging in any philosophical discussions with Lady Bird - but you're at a highway rest stop, remember? Instead, Lady Bird gives out useful information such as the latest traffic & weather conditions updated by Internet - probably "spoken" in a childlike female voice.

Choose to ignore Lady Bird and "she" will industriously go about the business of scrubbing toilets and the surrounding areas. At 39 inches tall, 56 inches long and equipped with an on-board water tank, Lady Bird is anything but small and that goes for the price as well: a cool $30,000 per robot.

So you're staggering home from a hard night on the town, and you stop by the public toilet ... and there is this giant, glowing-eyed robot lady bird that starts talking to you in Japanese about road weather and traffic conditions .... I tell you, the Japanese don't need drugs.

[Cloud]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

So you're staggering home from a hard night on the town, and you stop by the public toilet ... and there is this giant, glowing-eyed robot lady bird that starts talking to you in Japanese about road weather and traffic conditions .... I tell you, the Japanese don't need drugs.

[Madman]

Attachment 15881

I don't get it??? She looks perfectly normal to me...

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by Madman

I don't get it??? She looks perfectly normal to me...

You mean ... normal ... apart from the fact that she's talking to a giant lady bird toilet-cleaning robot with glowing red eyes?