Toyota has jumped into the humanoid robot arena with some fanfare--literally. It held a sizeable press conference at which it unveiled three new robots, two of which have the dexterity and breath control (via artificial lips!) required to actually play the trumpet (footage has been running on the TV news this evening, and the playing wasn't at all bad).
The "Toyota partner robots" are intended for the broad purpose of "supporting human activities," though one interesting comment from Toyota boss Fujio Cho was that the company plans to employ them in creating "peopleless factories". Toyota plans to take suggestions for names for the currently-nameless robots, but has no plans to commercialise them. Company press release (Japanese) includes photos of the other two robots, one of which runs on two wheels, while the other is on the lines of the bipedal "exoskeleton" type intended to carry people that have begun appearing recently. via dottocomu
