• Los Angeles Times/AP, Friday, December 7, 2007 12 PM

Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe says robotics--a natural extension of the automaker's use of robots in manufacturing--will be a core business for the Japanese automaker in coming years. Toyota will test out its robots at hospitals, company-related facilities and other places starting next year, he says, and hopes to put what it calls "partner robots" to real use by 2010.

At a demonstration yesterday, a 5-foot-tall, all-white robot played a pretty solid "Pomp and Circumstance" on the violin, using its mechanical fingers to press the strings correctly and bowing with its other arm. Watanabe also presented a vision of the future in which wheelchair-like "mobility robots" would offer "bed-to-bed" services to people--including the elderly and sick.

Toyota, maker of the Prius hybrid and the best-selling Camry sedan, has been a relative latecomer in robots compared with its domestic rival Honda, as well as other companies, including Hitachi, Fujitsu and NEC. "We want to create robots that are useful for people in everyday life," Watanabe says.

Read the whole story at Los Angeles Times/AP »