WATCH: Hitachi’s New Humanoid Robot That Speaks

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Hitachi has introduced the third generation of its humanoid robot. Meet EMIEW3. The first EMIEW came into the world back in 2005, with its first successor following just two years later. Now, nearly a decade later, the EMIEW3 looks like it was worth the wait.

EMIEW3 weighs just 15kg but go at speed of nearly 6.5 km/h while rolling over minor obstacles. While the tiny robot doesn’t look much different, it has some cool new abilities. For example, the EMIEW3 can stand back up all on its own in the event it gets knocked down.

What’s more, EMIEW3 comes with impressive voice recognition and speech software that will allow it to understand questions and respond to them. This will come in handy for the role Hitachi envisions its robot to occupy: a cute and incredibly helpful customer service aide.

One visible difference the EMIEW3 sports that its predecessors lacked is a beating LED heart underneath the surface of its chest.

The demonstrations below shows EMIEW3 interacting with an English-speaking “tourist,” as well as the process by which it gets up when it falls down.

Despite the marked improvements over its ancestors, the EMIEW3 still feels like a lacklustre effort. The competition the grew over the last near-decade has raised the bar significantly, and Hitachi seems to not be reaching very high.

Softbank’s Pepper is all but ready to step into the world of retail, and offers much, much more than Hitachi’s cute little humanoid machine. By the time it’s expected to hit the stores sometime in 2018, we fear EMIEW3 will be terribly outdated.