Let a robot receptionist greet your guests
By Marc Perton 
posted January 26th 2006 4:02PM
posted January 26th 2006 4:02PM
Robots are starting to
move into the white collar world. No longer content to work serving
drinks or helping kids cross
streets, robots are now entering the office as receptionists. Japanese employment agency PeopleStaff has begun
offering robotic receptionists to its clients; for $430 a month, you can get a robot Hello Kitty or Ifbot (pictured) to sit at your front desk and greet visitors.
We're not quite sure what kind of company would actually want to hire Hello Kitty as a receptionist, but that's almost
beside the point. What we really want to know is this: what do you do when your recepto-bot starts bursting into
impromptu renditions of "Daisy?"
oh the irony... the company is called PeopleStaff.
Peee, Peee, Robots are taking over :)! haahah I agree with you alek, what an irony!?!?!?!
didn't take me long to take "Daisy" out of my alicebot's aiml files. You've not heard anything quite as anoying as the MS Agent "Merlin" singing daisy via a text-to-speach front end for Alice. *shudders*
That is pretty awesome!
I was wondering though, does the bot just greet the person or can it actually answer questions, call members of staff and do the job of a receptionist?
Has AIML gone that far?
Loving that irony (comment above) :o)
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwow. Ironic
that's hilarious.
What exactly does it say? Is there a link?
What distinguishes it from a laptop with a motion sensor?
Looks like a toy I had as a kid. Probably about as useful, too...
It's a press promotion and media event by PeopleStaff, pure and simple. There is no way that the Hello Kitty robot is capable of doing anything more than just entertaining kids. I chatted with the robot in Tokyo recently, http://www.robots-dreams.com/2005/11/hello_kitty_rob.html and you can see from the video how limited the functionality is.