Development of Mascot Robot System in NEDO project

The Mascot Robot System is developed as a part of the NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization in Japan) ldquoDevelopment Project for a Common Basis of Next-Generation Robotsrdquo. The Speech Recognition Module is also provided for this project by NEC Corporation and NEDO and is used in a Mascot Robot System to communicate with human beings. The Mascot Robot System (MRS) is an information presentation system destined to be used mainly as an information terminal in a home environment for casual communication with humans, and consists of 5 robots including an eye robot, a speech recognition module, and a notebook PC that controls the robot and the speech recognition module. These five robots connect together with a server through the internet by RTM (robot technology middleware) released from AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan). The Mascot Robot Systempsilas functioning is demonstrated in an ordinary living room, where casual communication between 5 robots and 4 human beings is conducted based on speech recognition and mentality expression of eye robots.