back to article Sony 'Workman', anyone? Consumer giant teams with Kawasaki on teleoperated ‘bots

Sony and Kawasaki Heavy Industries have created a new joint venture to build a platform that allows remote work through teleoperated robots. The pair last week announced that they’ll pump ¥100,000,000 (US$920,000) into a company that plans to build a “remote robot platform”. The Register prefers to call it a “Workman”. …

  1. Sgt_Oddball
    Terminator

    In typical Sony fashion...

    They'll get there first, make a robust product that lasts, but has too much proprietary tech that Kawasaki decides to abandon the project before someone else comes along and steals the whole market from Sony.

    (I mean seriously... Give me a modern tech market and I'll give you a product Sony did first then lost the market by failing to continue to innovate)

    1. kevin king

      Re: In typical Sony fashion...

      People are already there NVIDIA Isaac https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/deep-learning-ai/industries/robotics/ with the Jetson AGX Xavier

    2. Robert Grant

      Re: In typical Sony fashion...

      I was amazed to learn that Sony did the Apple-style keyboard before Apple...and dropped it. They're like kids in a toy store :)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: In typical Sony fashion...

      "...before someone else Sony comes along and steals the whole market from Sony someone else."

      Sony has bought, borrowed, stolen or has copycat most (if not all) of their products since they invaded the U.S. radio market in the 1960's. Sony is no angel.

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Re: In typical Sony fashion...

        Go on then - name them!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Next stage of development:

    I just want a teleworking robot that can attend meetings for me, so that I can actually get something done instead.

    THAT would be innovation (yes, I am asserting here that larger companies will never be able to get rid of meaningless meetings).

    1. herman

      Re: Next stage of development:

      We need an Electric Monk for meetings.

      "The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe."

      -- Douglas Adams (who else?)

  3. Potemkine! Silver badge

    On a side note

    Japan has the good solution to solve environmental problems: make less kids and reduce population. That leads to temporary problems of ageing population, but we are far too many on this planet. It's either time to regulate births, or to export some billions people to the Moon or Mars shortly.

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