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ShareLondon: How about going for shopping and being greeted by a robot to guide you to the relevant floors of a shopping store. That's what happened at a shop in a in Tokyo, Japan. Department store Takashimaya had enroll the services of a speech-recognising robot called Saya for a week.
Developed by Hiroshi Kobayashi of the Tokyo University of Science in 2004, the robot was recently involved in a trial at a Tokyo primary school. It was capable of catching students passing notes and copying homework as well as giving them a rather stern telling off.
Saya then began "working" at Takashimaya in Ginza where she sits at the store's information desk. For a week in October shoppers were treated to a very different kind of store assistant, reports the Telegraph.
It is capable of responding to shoppers' questions and complaints in more than 700 different ways, directing them to the relevant floors and making small talk in between. The female robot can also respond to questions about previous jobs and even where she was "created".
