TOKYO — Compared with a virtuoso’s, its rendition was a trifle, well, robotic. But Toyota’s new robot plays a pretty solid “Pomp and Circumstance” on the violin.
The 5-foot all-white robot, shown Thursday, used its mechanical fingers to press the strings correctly and bowed with its other arm, coordinating the movements well.
Toyota has already shown robots that roll around to work as guides and have fingers dexterous enough to play the trumpet.
Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe said robotics will be a core business for the company in coming years. Next year, Toyota will test its robots at hospitals, Toyota-related facilities and other places, he said. And the company hopes to put what it calls “partner robots” to real use by 2010, he said.
“We want to create robots that are useful for people in everyday life,” he told reporters at a Toyota showroom in Tokyo.
Watanabe and other company officials said robotics was a natural extension of the automaker’s use of robots in manufacturing, as well as the development of technology for autos related to artificial intelligence, such as sensors and pre- crash safety systems.
