Robot takes first steps in actor role

SONY CORPORATION’S toddler-shaped robot waddled into a Tokyo recording studio yesterday to dub a voice part for a television cartoon show, where the talking, dancing machine makes a cameo appearance.

Surrounded by a pack of photographers, the 23-inch-tall silver robot with glowing eyes walked slowly to a microphone, stopped, waved and muttered, “All this attention is making me nervous.”

Sony’s humanoid robot, called Qrio, uses software that changes text into an electronic voice. It took up its new challenge with gusto, delivering a couple of lines for an episode of Astro Boy, a weekly TV show from Sony Pictures Entertainment, set to start airing in the United States on Saturday.

In one scene, an animated version of Qrio tells a story to a group of children sitting under a tree. As the scene played on a monitor in the studio, the robot said on cue in a squeaky voice, “At last the young man fell under a spell. But he could not give up.”

Qrio, which stands for “quest for curiosity”, isn’t for sale but works as “an ambassador” for the Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment giant, performing at exhibitions and playing master of ceremonies at events.

Sony senior manager Yuichi Hattori said Qrio’s appearance in Astro Boy is a fine example of “synergy”, the dynamic boost Sony has promised, but hasn’t always delivered, when the company’s divisions work together and enhance each other to produce more than a sum of its parts.

Mr Hattori acknowledged the robot wasn’t really responding to the director’s commands but being controlled from a booth by wireless LAN, or local area network, to utter pre-programmed lines.