The robot of a most famous character

Japan already has many home robots and robot toys, so Takara-Tomy chose one of the most famous characters in Japan to counter them. Pikachu-shaped robot toy "HelloPika" is a new product focused on speaking behavior.

It has a sound recognition function, and when you talk to this, it responds variously with the voice of Pikachu, but they are all expressed as "Pika". In addition, it sings, activates skills, nods, laugh and makes the cheeks flash. If you titillate its sides, this may tickle and laugh. It's almost like interacting with pets.
The size of this is only 75mm × 115mm × 45mm and both arms have a clip-like structure, so you can put this in a shirt or bag pocket and take it outside. It works with two AAA batteries, the price is 3,229yen (including tax), and they release this on August 4th. Further, they plan to release this not only in Japan, but also in nine countries including Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. 

(c)Nintendo・Creatures・GAME FREAK・TV Tokyo・ShoPro・JR Kikaku
(c)Pokemon

Tutoring school in the pocket

In present day, only real textbooks are not tools of study and rather, those numbers are decreasing rapidly. On the other hand, it is mobile apps for studying that are increasing instead of them. Educational services company EduLab has released a free learning video application "Study Gear" for primary school and junior high school students.

They noticed that many of the existing learning mobile applications are aimed at university entrance examinations and many of them are charged. So, they provide learning contents optimized for the low age group in Study Gear for free. The subjects handled by this application are national language, mathematics, society, science, and English, and you can learn them at your own pace with original short animation of one and a half ~ two minutes. If you are good at a particular subject, you can also learn by skipping. They cooperated with ONE MEDIA in video production to produce high quality learning contents, and publishing company Obunsha was responsible for providing and supervising the questions. In addition, this application is supposed to be used by parents and their children, the more they learn by using this, the parents can obtain Study Gear Point, and can exchange them for NTT DoCoMo's point service d-point. Now, there are 500 kinds of contents showed in this application, and they are aiming to increase these to 3000 kinds in one year. Downloading and using the application is free(iOS/Android).

Toys to help studying

INTERNATIONAL TOKYO TOY SHOW 2018 was held this month, many toy companies released interesting new products accordingly. Among them, there were a lot of digital gadgets for kids reflecting the present day.
Sega-Toys will release a tablet Magical Me Pad for girls tied-up with Disney in August 9.

It has a camera for face recognition, video shooting function, translation function, Game development application touch pen and AI. For example, when users talk something to it in Japanese, Mickey Mouse translates it into English and talks on the screen. In addition, they cooperated with publisher Gakken Plus to install learning drills and Japanese-English dictionary on this, when users study using these, AI measures their proficiency level and quizzes questions suitable for them. This is a function reflecting the necessity of English compulsion at elementary school, but this also supports another new compulsory subject, programming learning. In the game development application, users can simulate game development by programming using Disney characters. Of course this also has features other than study. Currently, Youtuber is a very popular job for Japanese kids, and users can make their own videos like Youtuber using video shooting and editing functions. Unfortunately this have not internet function, but it supports microSD and users can store data in it.
The size of this is 189mm × 123mm × 20mm, and it works for 3 hours continuously with four AA batteries. The target age is over 6 years old, and the price is 16,200yen(including tax).

(c)Disney
(c)Disney. Based on the “Winnie the Pooh”works by A.A.Milne and E.H.Shepard.
(c)Disney/Pixar

Cosmetic application using AR

Cosmetics are one of the difficult items that purchase on e-commerce sites.So, cosmetic company DHC released a make-up simulation application "Make-up Palette" using AR.

By using this, their customers can try cosmetics casually. This is an application that reproduces various make-up patterns using DHC cosmetics with camera of smartphones and face recognition technology. Eyeshadows, teaks, lipsticks... you can select and simulate cosmetic items and makeup patterns on your face on the smartphone's screen. Even if you change the angle of the camera and expression, the make-up simulation follows them. It is very convenient to compare the faces before and after making-up and decide in advance which colors are suitable for you. When you find your favorite items, you can go DHC's shopping site immediately from the application and buy them. They are using this to send for their customers the latest products, campaigns, and seasonal make-up information also. The downloading is free(iOS/Android).

Custom-made life size robot

Whether for general use or for business use, robots are hot topics in Japan. Therefore, the attraction production company Curiosity started "Chararoid", a custom-made service of character robots.

The concept of this is "to make the anime world exist in reality", CG designers design the exterior of the robots, and the attraction software which they developed independently is used for the motion control. Robot and tablet work together, and it is possible to communicate by video display and touch panel operation. It also has a speech recognition function and can also talk. If you do not like the synthesized voice of the robots, you can order the voice of the voice acter. The flow of communication is managed by the timeline, and it can be linked with BGM, signage, and projection mapping. Its eyes have small displays, and they can express various emotions comically like anime. As for the price they have not disclosed and you have to ask them about it in ordering.