Yes, Japan has a lot to show off in Robotics area, from Honda’s Asimo and Prof. Ishiguro’s fembot Geminoid F to Toyota’ s violin-playing robot and Fujitsu’s HOAP-3.  But there joins to the bandwagon Vietnam thanks to the Vietnam’s first ever robotics firm  “Tosy”.  For the ones among you who have been faithfully following robotics news, TOsy is no strange name as they had attracted worldwide attention with their PIng-playing rObot the “TOPIO”in 2007 at the Tokyo International Robot Exhibition (IREX), which was finally developed into the latest model Topio 3.0 and demonstrated at IREX 2009.

This time Tosy unveiled their first humanoid waiter robot ” Topio Dio” at Automatica 2010 (International Trade Fair for AUtomation and Mechatronics) in Germany.

Developed as a service robot, or as so-called “Skillful Bartender and Waiter”, Topio Dio is 125 cm tall and weighs 45 kg. It is equipped with 28 joints, 3 wheels, built-in camera and sensor and is controlled via Wi-Fi. Although the price is not disclosed, apparently it is only %25 of the rates for similar products in the market.

P.S. Note that both Topio the table tennis player and Topio Dio the Waiter wear sun-glasses…so they are also image-conscious or rather ready for some sponsorship offers from sun-glasses brands?