Now that Monday's blog post peaked your interest on robots, check out this crazy, hot-off-the-press, news release! A large company in Japan is ready to put ten robots to work in their company, as part of their reception staff! So if you go up to their receptionist, a friendly, bright yellow robot will greet you! One meter tall and weighing in at 60 pounds, this robot is specialized in meeting, greeting and chatting with humans—not an easy task for a robot!  Sometimes, interacting with human beings can be confusing, even for human beings themselves!!  So how does a bright yellow, bubble-headed robot do the job? With lots of help from technology of course!

The yellow robots are programmed with all sorts of hi-tech goodies that help them find there way in a human world. Like what? They’ve got face-recognition software, for example. This lets them search for and recognize human faces. They also have the ability to recognize human voices. They can even strike up a pleasant conversation, since they know over 10 000 words. And they can guide you to the office you are looking for, and not get lost! To top it all off, they are even programmed to sing happy little tunes—just the thing to really bother a frustrated human at the reception desk!

Of course, high-tech reception robots aren’t cheap. A thousand bucks will only get you a day’s worth of reception. But prices should be coming down in the near future. If they really do become affordable, you may even have a bright yellow butler opening your front door when you are older. As for whether the robot sings those happy songs, well that’s up to you. It all depends on whether you want any of your visitors to return or not! And of course how well your robot can hold a tune!