The Japanese are expecting house guests. These visitors will stay for a long time, serving tea, cleaning house, making Conversation and taking care of their (36) in old age.
"The machine is a friend of (37) in Japan," said a robotics professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. "A robot is a friend, (38) . So it is easy to use machines in this country. But other countries, maybe, are quite different."
Japan’s (39) is declining, and more than a fifth of its population is over age 65 the largest percentage in the world. With a dislike to large-scale (40) , the Japanese see robots as a way to handle a number of tasks, especially care and (41) for the disabled and elderly.
Creating a household robot is a great challenge. For financial reasons, Sony stopped working on its robot-dog this year. Mitsubishi and Honda are (42) forward with human-like robots that (43) a vision of the future, even if their cost is too high and usefulness too low to reach a mass market.
Mitsubishi’s robot is a house-sitter. (44) .It also recognizes faces and can talk. (45) that Japanese scientists expect to become commonplace. (46) . Her wish was granted.