Chip industry leading the way
Among the characteristics of the toy market are a short product life cycle, a well-defined high season for sales, the need to constantly roll out new products, and a strong emphasis on product safety. The highly competitive games and toys market clearly offers opportunities to robot makers. Does that mean opportunities for Taiwan as well?
"Toys are certainly an area in which Taiwan's robot manufacturers are making their presence felt," says Benjamin Jan, general manager of the Precision Machinery Research and Development Center. "Competing in the toy market requires creativity, reasonable pricing and core technologies." Jan says that Taiwan's advanced chip design technology is world renowned, and that Taiwanese chip designers have a significant presence in the international toy market. In fact, he notes that RoboSapien, Tickle Me Elmo, the Nintendo Wii, and the Sony PS3 all utilize chips from Taiwanese firms--Via Technologies, Winbond, PixArt, and Genesys Logic, respectively.
At last year's Info Month Taipei, the item attracting the most attention wasn't a cellphone handset or a laptop computer. Instead, it was Pleo, a green, AI-driven robot dinosaur developed by the US company Ugobe. Pleo's creator is a part-German, part-Chinese designer named Caleb Chung who worked on the film Jurassic Park before taking a job designing toys for Mattel.
According to Ugobe's website, Pleo is a "life form" based on a Jurassic-era Camarasaurus. Pleo bobs its head and wags its tail while walking, droops them when sad, snores when sleeping and even dreams. Even more amazingly, Pleo can recognize its own kind. Owners need to be careful that their Pleo doesn't pick up any bad habits.
Pleo has seven microprocessor chips, 14 motors, and 38 sensors, including visual, auditory and tactile sensors. Its soft, rubberized body actually feels like that of a living pet. In fact, it is so lifelike that it has stirred buyer interest even before its release. Hong Kong's Jetta Company and Taiwan's Foxconn will reportedly handle the actual manufacturing.
"The problem we have right now is a lack of our own toy brands," says Jan. "And it will take people and resources to develop our own killer applications." Noting that Taiwan is former toy-making giant that has grown into tech-industry powerhouse, he argues that reinvigorating the toy industry and creating business opportunities require that we integrate advanced robotics technologies into our toys.
Tamkang University's Soccer Robot
Height:46 cm
Weight:3.1 kg
Features:Used in competitions. Twenty-six motors are distributed among its head, arms, torso and legs, with its legs alone boasting 14 motors. Its head is equipped with image sensors with a visual range of approximately 200 cm.
Speed:12 cm per second.
Cost:NT$150,000 unassembled.
Robot soccer players use onboard recognition systems to find the ball, identify the goal and try to score. But when the Taiwanese soccer robots shown here fall over, they have to wait for a human to set them on their feet again, unlike their Japanese counterparts, which can get up on their own.
A robot baby that can converse with its owner; a rabbit whose eyes light up when you receive e-mail; Paro, an electronic baby seal; and Tickle Me Elmo.
A robot baby that can converse with its owner; a rabbit whose eyes light up when you receive e-mail; Paro, an electronic baby seal; and Tickle Me Elmo.