For those of you that are watching this show, you would know that Season 2 premiered last Monday. For those that haven’t, this series is definitely worth watching if you liked the Terminator movies and also robots in general. True it doesn’t have Arnold in it but after watching it for awhile it doesn’t make much of a difference. The show is good for the following reasons:

-Robot Chick

Summer Glau does a pretty damn good job being a robot. Facial expressions and acting skills done by her makes it very believable. However, she is only a teenbot and not as hot as Kristanna Loken from T3.

Storyline

So this whole series is based off of events that happen after T2, so I guess it is pretty interesting to get to know more details about the characters that the movie didn’t portray.  Although I do admit some of the episodes is not as interesting or entertaining as Heroes, 24, or The Shield, it does a relatively good job to keep the audience interested. I usually don’t continue watching something if I find it is boring or not interesting, but with this show, I had no problem watching it straight. The first season I finished in 24 hours.

I don’t have much to say about the bad robots yet, because quite honestly, they were pretty disappointing compared to the movie robots. I guess they can’t show too much killings or anything on TV but come on, where’s all the suspense and all the action.

I do have to say though, sometimes the show reminded me of The Small Wonders, that I watched as a kid, when the robot named Vicky was apart of the household, and the boy had to teach her how to do things. In this series John Connor and the girl went to school and you see him teaching her things while her emotions are pretty stale. It makes me wonder what it would be like to have a robot as a friend.

Season 2 is on Mondays on Fox

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Japan is going to send Doraemon as their ‘anime ambassador’ to deepen peoples understanding of Japan and their culture. If you have not seen the anime Doraemon, it was actually pretty good when I was a kid. Doraemon has a large, pouch-like compartment in his stomach from which he produces many gadgets from the future; the drawer being something of a 4th-dimensional “doorway” between the present age and the 22nd century. Although he can hear perfectly well, Doraemon has no ears: his robotic ears were eaten by a mouse, giving him a series-long phobia of mice. He was pretty much sent back to aid the main character in times of trouble. It was pretty popular children’s series and I believe it is still pretty popular amongst Japanese culture. It is with this reason that this character is the anime ambassador for Japan. I used to love this series, and I can’t wait for this character to travel the world and then finally come to the U.S. and have the show here. It might be pretty interesting to watch, but I dont think it will amuse me like it did when I was 5. I’m sure the kids will love it.

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I think the Japanese robots never fail to amaze me. There is a robot now developed by NEC to basically take care of kids. “Childcare Robot PaPeRo” is capable to play with and watch over children. The Childcare Robot is capable of recognizing and verbally communicating with people, sending images by mobile phone to persons far away, as well as playing games and singing along with others. With it, NEC is looking for new relationships and possibilities as a part of children’s groups at daycare centers, kindergartens and elementary schools.

“The aim of our research at NEC is not just to further robot technology, but to examine and develop better human-machine interface through the concept of living with robots“, said Yoshihiro Fujita, Project Manager, NEC Incubation Center.

This has got to be one of the best ideas ever. Taking care of children can sometimes be a tedious job, and you might not want to hire someone because you are not 100% sure if you can trust them, so comes in this robot that can entertain your kids as well as send you images through to your mobile phone in case you want to check in on them. I think they will still need some supervision even with this toy but as it gets more advanced I can see these toys taking over the classes and teaching kids and keeping them entertained. Too bad it’s not out yet.

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Cute little robot that is pretty similar to the Honda Asimo but with one more function, it is a webcam. Imagine having one of these on your desk instead of the regular looking webcam. Imagine when friends come over and you show off your robot with the webcam, that would be something to brag about.  It does have glowing white LED eyes and red LED ears that light up when it detects darkness or ambient light in the room is too low.

This is the perfect gift for someone or just for yourself at the office or at your home computer. With a quite low price of a mere $24, it’s not much better compare with the built-in webcam, which will only give you a basic VGA resolution with none of the fancy face-tracking or other features now common in non-robot webcams. I don’t know exactly how the quality of this robot compares to a real webcam, but for the uniqueness and the cuteness factor this could beat any regular webcams easily.

The VGA resolution is 350k pixels and it records in 24-bit true color. The frame rate is 30fps and it can record resolutions of 640 x 480, 320 x 240, and 160 x 120. The cam works with Win XP, 2000, ME and 98.

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From August 8th, Sega Toys Japan will start selling a robot dog specifically designed for children between 4-8 years old. The “Uchi no Suupa Doggu Sakadachi Rakki” (My Super Stand-up-and-beg Dog Lucky) can respond to a total of 13 spoken phrases. These little critters will take less time to train a real dog and can just be a substitute for peopel who perhaps has allergies or can not keep a dog with them.

Sega Toys said the dog was developed with the voices of around 100 children who helped to improve the speech recognition software’s level of accuracy. Lucky will react to commands such as “sit”, “there, there”, “sit up and beg” etc. I am not sure if this ‘dog’ will respond to any other language but the common commands should be of no problem for these little dogs.

The dog stands 25 cm tall and is equipped with 3 mini motors. Sega Toys hopes to sell 60,000 units in the first year (price: $86). I have no idea who would pay $86 to buy this but I am pretty sure there will be people who will snatch these up as if they are the real thing. I can see that since some people have issues with real pets these comes as great substitutes for the real thing.

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