You know, it's been nearly forty years since Intel introduced the first microprocessor, and even at this late date the company comprises a whopping eighty percent of the global market for CPUs. But not so fast! Like an electronics industry remake of The Magnificent Seven (which is, of course, an American remake of The Seven Samurai) NEC and Renesas have teamed up with a stalwart band of companies, including Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Panasonic, and Canon, to develop a new CPU that is compatible with Waseda University professor Hironori Kasahara's "innovative energy-saving software." The goal is to create a commercial processor that runs on solar cells, moderates power use according to the amount of data being processed (a current prototype runs on 30% the power of a standard CPU), remains on even when mains power is cut, and, of course, upsets the apple cart over at Intel. Once a standard is adopted and the chip is used in a wide range of electronics, firms will be able to realize massive savings on software development. The new format is expected to to be in place by the end of 2012. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]

Honda may have bestowed plenty of improvements on ASIMO over the years, but it looks like an alumni of rival robot maker Waseda University has taken it upon himself to deliver some improvements of his own that make it even more lifelike, though no doubt just as prone to tumbles. The key, it seems, is to ditch the robotics and high-tech materials altogether and instead use something called "wood," which can be fashioned into a shell (or "costume," if you will) that's able to accommodate one slightly uncomfortable human. Either that, or ASIMO has been robot-napped from Honda and is now being held at an undisclosed location. Check out the video after the break to decide for yourself.

Perhaps our Future Robot Overlords[TM] aren't planning on decimating the human population after they take over -- they might have a good reason to retain a handful of bipedal hominidae. Who knows, really? But we're betting that if they do, the lucky slave population is going to want to hear some bed-time stories from time to time. To that end, Japanese researchers have developed Ninomiya-kun, a 3.2-foot tall aluminum-framed robot capable of reading aloud from printed material. Developed at Waseda University and recently unveiled at a trade fair in Kitakyushu, the bad boy uses cameras to "read" the text, which it parses with OCR software before synthesizing its voice. As far as we can tell, this thing still sounds like a machine, and it's vocabulary is somewhat limited (it can currently recognize over 2,000 kanji, hiragana and katakana characters), but researchers are working on a more lifelike voice and a broader vocabulary. After that, the developers would like to unload this thing on elementary schools and old folks homes, whose population won't find this thing creepy or disconcerting at all, at all. We're sure of it. Peep the video after the break.

[Via Pink Tentacle]

Japan's Tmsuk and Waseda University have certainly proven themselves capable of pushing the boundaries of robotics on their own, but few could have been prepared for what they were able devise when they teamed up, their creation itself included. That somewhat startled face you see above is the KOBIAN Emotional Humanoid Robot, which is not only able to walk about and interact with humans, but use its entire body in addition to its facial expressions to display a full range of emotions. That's apparently possible in part thanks to a new double-jointed neck that lets it achieve some more expressive postures and, of course, a slew of motors in its face that lets it move its lips, eyelids and those all-important eyebrows. Still sleeping a little too comfortably? Then head on past the break for the video. There's always a video.

[Via Pink Tentacle]