Kokoro, a Japanese firm, offers Actroids for rent to greet customers and provide information in up-market coffee shops, office complexes, and museums or "old houses". The Actroid series has been jointly developed by Japanese entertainment firm Kokoro and Hiroshi Ishiguro, well-known for building a robot doppelgänger of himself. The clip below shows a video of the actroid Repliee Q1 from April 2007.

Will life-like robots like these make for more cases like 33-year old Zoltan, who fell in love with and married a robot?

This is an article on the history of the Actroid robot series. I don’t speak Japanese, but the article features 9 video clips showing the robot’s incredible progression since 2003.

Future Vision by Erwin Van Lun on this article

Now for rent for events, in a five years more available in all countries and all languages, in ten years for consumers, and between 2020 and 2035 we will notice a steady increase of robots in our houses, at our work, in our streets.

Related trends

• 2025-2050: Roboworld