Having Failed with Cars, Toyota Takes Up Robotics...

What do you do when you begin to suck at what you were doing great for decades? Give it up, of course! And start working on something far, far more dangerous (if you fail at this too, that is).

Amidst a storm of recalls due to braking systems failure on its US-built vehicles, Japanese carmaker Toyota announced today it is working on a "partner robot" to be used as a personal assistant for humans. And not one, but four different types of robots...

For one, we have the walking robot, which will assist the elderly. This one, as its name suggests, walks for a living. It comes with two legs and is able to use its hands to carry out a wide variety of tasks. As you can see, it can also play a trumpet.

The second one is the rolling robot, which will be used for manufacturing purposes (excluding cars?). As Toyota say, this one "zooms along quickly without taking up much space". It can also use its hands to...play a trumpet.

If you have ever dreamed of humping (sorry, mounting) a robot, the third, mountable one is the perfect choice. It can carry its passengers almost anywhere they need to go but, unfortunately, having no hands and mouth, it is unable to... play the trumpet.

The fourth and last robot is a combination between the three mentioned above. It's shorter than the first, has legs, unlike the second and wears a dress, not a human, like the third does...It is built to research the wire-operation system on which Toyota will base its robots on.

So, we have robots, walking or zooming around, with a trumpet (or human) in their hands, while wearing a dress (ok, kimono, we know!)...How do you like the future?

Toyota doesn't like it, apparently, as sources like tgdaily.com say the robots will depart this dreadful Earth and settle on the moon in 2020. It is unclear at this point whether the elderly to which they tend to will go along for the ride...