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from the finally,-a-baby-you-can-play-pass-with...-literally! dept.
Toyota will sell a miniature version of the robot it sent to the International Space Station in 2013 to Japanese customers next year. The demand for robotic companions in Japan is expected to be strong due to an aging population, plummeting birthrate, and more adults choosing to live alone:
Toyota Motor Corp on Monday unveiled a doe-eyed palm-sized robot, dubbed Kirobo Mini, designed as a synthetic baby companion in Japan, where plummeting birth rates have left many women childless. Toyota's non-automotive venture aims to tap a demographic trend that has put Japan at the forefront of aging among the world's industrial nations, resulting in a population contraction unprecedented for a country not at war, or racked by famine or disease.
"He wobbles a bit, and this is meant to emulate a seated baby, which hasn't fully developed the skills to balance itself," said Fuminori Kataoka, Kirobo Mini's chief design engineer. "This vulnerability is meant to invoke an emotional connection." Toyota plans to sell Kirobo Mini, which blinks its eyes and speaks with a baby-like high-pitched voice, for 39,800 yen ($392) in Japan next year. It also comes with a "cradle" that doubles as its baby seat designed to fit in car cup holders.
The robot also requires a 300-yen ($2.95) monthly subscription.
Also at BBC, TechCrunch, and New York Magazine (nice headline).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 04 2016, @02:02PM
That's based on the fallacy that the number of jobs is independent of the number of people. Immigrants not only can take jobs, they also can create jobs. The right thing to do is to figure out for different types of immigrants what is the relation of jobs taken to jobs created, and then allow immigrants that create more jobs than they take.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday October 04 2016, @06:54PM
Japan is overcrowded, so the limitation isn't a fallacy the way it would be if there were lots of open space. When I lived there in the 1950's most people seemed to be "overworked", but not unhappy. This is no in-depth analysis. I was a pre-teen, and most people I saw were working in small companies, self-owned businesses, or small farms. I didn't seem much of the life in the larger cities. A few people were quite unhappy, but they were definitely "outsiders". Crazy people were sometimes left to roam the streets, and a few people lived in holes dug in the side of cliffs. So I had no encounters with "salarymen" or rich people. But most farms were extremely small, so small that when I looked back on them after coming back to the US (and getting a bit older) I was surprised they could support even a couple, much less a family.
I also didn't experience the notable Japanese prejudice against foreigners. Well, that was during the US occupation, a cousin who moved to Japan later reported that the prejudice against foreigners is still strong, though not as strong against people from the US as against Koreans. Also I lived on Kyushu and she lived on northern Honshu...so perhaps there's a geographical difference.
But Japan, at least the areas I saw, *is* densely overpopulated. They don't need immigrants. China has lots of open space in various badlands, but Japan is *much* more limited that way.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.