FOH talks to Dino Ushida, General Manager of Business Development - BUSINESS DESIGN LABORATORY CO. LTD – The makers of Hello Kitty!

Following our ‘Robots on Reception’ article, a number of readers have been anxious that their jobs are at risk – what if their bosses like the idea of Hello Kitty instead? So we contacted BDL in Japan to find out the realities of the situation.

Business Design Laboratory began life in 1990 as a printing and publishing company, changing to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in 2002. They began on a joint project with ‘Human Robot Consortium’ and two years later had developed their first robot, ‘If’. The name was later changed to ‘Ifbot’ and commercialized. Hello Kitty is the second product from BDL:

Dino, all the robots manufactured and sold by Business Design Co use extremely advanced technology. At nearly 2000 UK pounds for Hello Kitty, this isn't a robot for children. Are your customers’ mostly commercial businesses, or private households?

I understand your point. Both Ifbot and Hello Kitty ROBO are originally designed as household products. Now the products have different versions and the customers are roughly half / half.

Can you give some examples of the type of businesses who have bought your robots, and what they use them for?

- Nursing care facilities for preventing dementia and providing pleasant atmosphere
- Local government for reception use (at city halls, etc)
- Science museums and similar for reception and attraction
- Event companies for periodic event use
- General business enterprises for reception use and so on.

Millions of pounds have been invested in the development of Ifbot and Hello Kitty. Can this technology be used for other purposes? Is the ambition of the company to provide corporate solutions to customer service and information availability, or are there other areas where you see the robots as invaluable. Is this purely for the Japanese market, or are there plans for world wide sales?

Good question but not easy to answer. The shortest answer should be "both" (or "any").
At least, we believe robots have something else compared to "equipment" consisting of the same technology and functionality. And of course we look at the world wide market.

Although your website mentions that Hello Kitty has moveable body parts, can you confirm if they need manual adjustment or whether they move robotically?

Body parts of Hello Kitty ROBO don't need manual adjustment. They move according to the conversation patterns which count up to 20,000.

Are all the robots multi-lingual or can they speak only Japanese?

Commercial products at this stage are all Japanese versions. We have so far made a few English or multilingual robots as prototypes.

Are the 20,000 or so words stored in the memory programmed in by humans or other robots?

20,000 is the number of communication patterns. They were scripted, programmed, verified and evaluated all by humans.

Hello Kitty can recognize up to 10 different people. Is it possible to erase a person from the memory, thus making room for another, or will it only ever be the same 10 people?

You can erase one of the names and register new one. Meanwhile, ifbot also can remember 10 different names. (But ifbot commercial version does not have eyes so he recognizes human name by dialogue.)

Japanese have a reputation in the UK for extreme fun and high technology. Is this how you see yourselves?

Good question but impossible to answer...

…I personally admire UK for Beatles and other great artists.

All your robots take on childish identities. Why is this? If you were going to open up the market to other countries, do you think there would be pressure to re-design the robots to be more 'corporate'?

Ifbot and Hello Kitty ROBO are both childish characters as you stated but it just happened that way, I think. However I believe we will continue offering robots with human-friendly characters.

So, receptionists - your jobs are safe at the moment! Currently Hello Kitty only speaks Japanese, and it could be a good few years before BDL mass produce English speaking robots. Many thanks to Dino Ushida for this interview. You can find out more about BDL products at their website:

http://www.business-design.co.jp/en/index.html