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By CNET Asia Staff, 27 August 2003 08:14

NEWS Japanese researchers are pressing the government to invest in an ambitious robot development scheme, with the aim of creating a machine with the artificial intelligence of a human child, reported the Japan Times. The quest, which has been named the Atom Project, will span 30 years, and will require almost half a billion US dollars annually from the government. Researchers proposing the project believe that the Atom Project - inspired by late cartoonist Osamu Tezuka's popular robot animation series 'Tetsuwan Atom', also known as Astro Boy overseas - will help promote scientific and technological advances in Japan, following the footsteps of the 1960s Apollo Project in the US which propelled men to the moon in 1969. The project will put the country at the forefront of a lucrative new industry, as well as benefit the economy from products spun off from robot research, argue the scientists. But getting official support might prove difficult, due to Japan's current economic woes. The proposed research will be spearheaded by Mitsuo Kawato, chief of the Computational Neuroscience Laboratories at the Kyoto-based Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International. Kawato is an expert in brain science and has created a humanoid robot that has learnt 24 kinds of human action over three years. "Most of today's robots operate with a program written by humans. In order to develop a robot that can think and move like a five-year-old, we have to first understand the mechanism of how human brains work," he said in the report. Japan's technology in robotics has reached the level where robots can copy the human walk, as seen in Asimo, the robot created by Honda. However, Asimo's physical ability is still far below that of a five-year-old human. During the 60s, the US government invested more than $20bn in the Apollo Project. The quest spawned a broad range of technological discoveries, from computer technology to development of cordless and energy-saving electric appliances, to the fluorination technology used in frying pans. While this ambitious programme might not get the scale of support that Kawato desires, Japan's large firms have earmarked robotics as an industry they will focus on, driven by country's falling birthrate and greying population.