Japanese home robots plan to lead the industry standard to take the initiative

According to Japanese media reports, recently, the Robot World Cup (RoboCup) came to a successful conclusion in Germany. Robots from Toyota Motor and SoftBank Group were selected as the base hardware for a development competition in the home robotics sector. The report pointed out that the Robot World Cup has been leading the technological development of robots in the world. In the future, various research institutions will use these two kinds of robots elected as 'standard machines' and compete to introduce new usage methods and software technologies. In the international hegemony race around domestic robots, the two companies have already taken a head start. The Robot World Cup is hosted by the Robot World Cup Alliance composed of people of insight from Japan, the United States, Europe and other countries and regions. Since 1997, activities such as robot football games have been held every year to promote the technological development of robots. Toyota's 'HSR (Human Assisted Robot)' and SoftBank's 'Pepper' robot have beaten robots in Spain, France and other countries and have been adopted as standard home robots. After 2017, it will be used as the basic hardware in the new sector where the home robot software development competition is launched. The adoption time is at least about 3 years. Both robots will become more visible among researchers, and inquiries are expected to increase. It is reported that the predecessor of Softbank Robot is the small bipedal walking robot 'NAO' of a French company, which was adopted as the standard robot for football matches in the 2006 Robot World Cup. Research institutions in various countries are competing to develop technologies that promote NAO's flexible movement, and the development of software and the exploration of how to use it have been intensively promoted, and the performance of the robot has been improved. SoftBank took a fancy to such a development model, acquired the French company, and launched pepper in 2015. With this selection, HSR and pepper have the potential to become the de facto industry standard for domestic robots. The robotics industry is accelerating its reorganization. In order to grab customers and talents and seize the initiative, the trends of various companies may become more active.