Without a doubt, robots will become even more important in the future than they are today and, for this reason, getting the younger generations used to their presence might be an extremely important thing to do, since children will most likely be the ones who'll have to live, work and play alongside robots at some point, when the more advanced versions of today's automatons will become as mainstream as... TVs are nowadays, for example.

Anyway, while the rest of the world tends to their mundane business, the Japanese are already thinking ahead and are rolling out new robots like there's no tomorrow. And the latest device of this type we've come across is the e-NUVO, a tiny humanoid robot meant to show very young children what robots are all about (although I'm pretty sure the future holds some more or less different things in store).

Anyway, the 126-cm high robot (that's pretty much the same as the average height of elementary students, who will represent the e-NUVO's target audience) was developed by a group of companies and organizations, namely the Nippon Institute of Technology, Harada Vehicle Design, ZMP and ZNUG Design.

The aim of the project is to let children learn about humanoid robots and actually see one in action for themselves, this hands-on approaching being a lot more beneficial for their further development than simply reading about robots from a text book or watching them on TV.

In any case, extending such courses to other parts of the world would be a great idea, but since there's no place on Earth with such a love or admiration for robots as Japan, it should come as no surprise that this is the first place where the e-NUVO will be deployed. Also, I'm pretty sure that, should this project prove to be a successful one, fully-automated robotic teachers are just around the corner.





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