Robot Greets Customers at Japanese Department Store

A department store in Japan has experimented with using a robot assistant to help handle the large volume of shoppers, according to the Telegraph .

Newly opened stores in Japan are often swamped with crowds of shoppers looking for big discounts on household items. Department store Takashimaya hoped a speech-recognizing robot would help it handle the massive crowds it was expecting this past week.

The store used a robot named Saya which was developed by Hiroshi Kobayashi of the Tokyo University of Science in 2004. Saya had been used only as a teacher's assistant at a Tokyo primary school, until recently when a Takashimaya store in Ginza began using the robot as the store's information desk. ( See a photo of Saya assisting a customer. )

Saya is capable of responding to shoppers' questions and complaints in more than 700 different ways.

Many shoppers were satisfied with Saya's service, but Telegraph reporter Hunter Skipworth said, "It may just be my Japanese accent but Saya seemed rather confused by my simple questions, often directing me to the toilet regardless of where I had asked to go."

Saya has been returned to Tokyo University for now, but other robot technology is being used in Japan.

At a nursing home in Tsurugashima, a robotic suit, known as the Hybrid Assisted Limb (HAL), is being used to help elderly patients boost their strength by a multiple of 10. One man walked for the first time in two years when he wore the suit. "I was surprised," Yoshiyuki Sankai, the CEO of Cyberdyne, the company that created HAL, told USA Today. "I expected him to stand up, but not to walk."

Panasonic also is developing a new robotic bed that is able to convert into a joystick-controlled wheelchair when the owner commands it to transform.