The Toyotabot

We're starting to get the impression that every auto manufacturer in Japan has decided to get into the robot business: Toyota showed off a trumpet playing robot the other day and says it plans to beef up production of the humanoid robot, which is now planned for commercial sale around 2010. Clearly trailing Honda's ASIMO (not to mention non-car maker Sony), Toyota plans to create a special robot R&D site filled with hundreds of engineers to push the project along — or just catch up.