A robot includes an umbrella portion capable of performing a rotational movement and an opening/closing movement of an umbrella; and a processor. The processor acquires emotion data representing a pseudo emotion in accordance with an external stimulus, and controls, based on the emotion data, at least one of the rotational movement or the opening/closing movement of the umbrella of the umbrella portion.

A communication robot includes a housing and a speaker. The communication robot performs a motion of emitting a sound including a particular phoneme. With such a configuration, it is possible to provide a new communication robot that contributes to the development of the listening ability of languages. For example, the communication robot may include a storage. The communication robot may be configured to determine a motion to be performed based on the information of the storage.

An integrated communication and capacitive sensing circuit and an interactive system using the same are provided in the present invention. The integrated communication and capacitive sensing circuit includes a microprocessor, a sensing electrode and a resonant circuit. The microprocessor includes a first input/output (I/O) pin and a second I/O pin. The sensing electrode is coupled to the first I/O pin of the microprocessor. The input terminal of the resonant circuit is coupled to the second I/O pin of the microprocessor, and the output terminal of the resonant circuit is coupled to the sensing electrode. When sensing the capacitance is performed, the first I/O pin of the microprocessor detects the charging/discharging state of the sensing electrode to determine the capacitive variation. When a data output is performed, the first I/O pin of the microprocessor is set to high impedance, and the second I/O pin of the microprocessor outputs or does not output a high frequency carrier according to a transmission data, wherein the resonant circuit amplifies the amplitude of the high frequency carrier.

In an aspect, a toy assembly is provided and includes a housing and an inner object inside the housing. The inner object includes a breakout mechanism that includes a hammer and an actuation lever. The hammer is movable between a retracted position in which the hammer is spaced from the housing and an advanced position in which the hammer is positioned to break the housing. The actuation lever is pivotable from a hammer retraction position towards a hammer driving position so as to drive the hammer towards the advanced position.

A robot 150 is placed on a touch panel. When touch sensor action sections 156a to 156c provided on a bottom face 150b of the robot act on a touch pad, an information processing device shows a face image in a rectangular area 16 of a display screen 14 of the touch panel. The rectangular area 16 corresponds to the bottom face of the robot. The face image is grabbed from the bottom face 150b of the robot 150 and appears in a face section 152. Further, the brightness of pixels in areas 18a and 18b of the display screen 14 is changed. The areas 18a and 18b correspond to optical sensors 160a and 160b provided on the bottom face 150b of the robot. The robot 150 detects the change in question, converting the change into a motion of an internal actuator, sound output, light emission, and so on in accordance with predetermined rules.

There is provided an information processing apparatus and an information processing method that can provide more useful information for an action plan of an autonomous mobile body, the information processing apparatus including an action recommendation unit configured to present a recommended action recommended to an autonomous mobile body, to the autonomous mobile body that performs an action plan based on situation estimation. The action recommendation unit determines the recommended action on the basis of an action history collected from a plurality of the autonomous mobile bodies, and on the basis of a situation summary received from a target autonomous mobile body that is a target of recommendation. The information processing method includes presenting, by a processor, a recommended action recommended to an autonomous mobile body, to the autonomous mobile body that performs an action plan based on situation estimation.

In an aspect, a toy assembly is provided, and includes a housing, an inner object (which may, in some embodiments, represent a character) inside the housing, a tether, and a motor. The tether is driven by the motor to pull at least one removable housing portion from the housing.

A modular electro-mechanical agent having a plurality of modules including mechanical and electrical components, that can be constructed to complete at least one pre-determined task and/or contribute in performing the at least one pre-determined task. The electro-mechanical agent can include extension modules and can be altered as per user preference to add, eliminate or modify any features of the agent for completing and/or participating in a plurality of pre-determined tasks.

A robot includes an operation control unit that selects a motion of the robot, a drive mechanism that executes a motion selected by the operation control unit, and a remaining battery charge monitoring unit that monitors a remaining charge of a rechargeable battery. Behavioral characteristics of the robot change in accordance with the remaining battery charge. For example, a motion with a small processing load is selected at a probability that is higher the smaller the remaining battery charge. Referring to consumption plan data that define a power consumption pace of the rechargeable battery, the behavioral characteristics of the robot may be caused to change in accordance with a difference between the remaining battery charge scheduled in the consumption plan data and the actual remaining battery charge.

A robotic system comprising: an input sensor; an electromechanical interface; an electronic interface; and a processor comprising hardware and configured to execute machine-readable instructions including artificial intelligence-based instructions, wherein upon execution of the machine-readable instructions, the processor is configured to: process an input provided by a user via the input sensor based on the artificial intelligence-based instructions; generate a first output signal that is provided to the electromechanical interface such that a movable component connected to the robotic system is put in motion, and generate a second output signal that is provided to the electronic interface such that a behavior or expression responsive to the input is rendered at the electronic interface.