As reported on Confessions of a Technophile, researchers from Japan’s prestigious Waseda University and the Shanghai Jiaotong University in China have jointly developed a robot capable of reading out stories from printed books.

Called Ninomiyakun, the aluminum-made robot is 1-meter tall and weighs 25kg. It comes with a built-in camera and a computer that can recognize 2,300 Japanese characters (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji) commonly known to a Japanese elementary school student. A character recognition software is used to translated text into spoken words, which are produced by a voice synthesizer.

Kamada Seiitirou, the professor who co-developed the robot, told the Yomiuri Shimbun that in future, Ninomiyakun will be enhanced to tell stories with emotions.

I can’t help thinking of Sean Buvala and his definition of story, which includes the requirement for “an audience in front of the teller which can be one person or thousands.” OK, the audience needs to consist of people, but does the storyteller have to be a person (!!??).