Japan's Murata Manufacturing introduced a new addition to its robotic creations Thursday, which comes in the form of a group of cheerleaders.
The Murata Cheerleading robots comes with black hair, red skirts, and rollers under the skirt that keeps them balanced and rotates them to move around, according to Computerworld. An infrared sensor and ultrasonic microphones are included under the hair to help the robot detect objects that are close by.
Motion is handled by three gyro sensors, which control different movements such as front-to-back, side-to-side and rotation. Murata also included a wireless network that can control a group of 10 robots and make them perform different synchronized movements, such as dancing, as well as move them into formations like a heart.
The robots' routines are current pre-programmed, but the company is working on bringing real-time editing to the machines, The Verge reported.
The Cheerleaders are the latest robots to come out of Murata, which include the bicycle-riding Murata Boy and the unicycle-riding Murata Girl.
Koichi Yoshikawa, spokesman for Murata, said the robots were created to put people in better moods, Computerworld reported.
"We designed the cheerleader robots to cheer people and make them smile," Yoshikawa said. "Their features can be summed up as '3S': stability, synchronization and sensing and communication."
The Cheerleaders will be on display from Oct. 7th to the 11th at the Ceatec tech expo outside Tokyo.
Murata is not looking to sell the Cheerleaders, and is instead focusing on showing the robots as examples of the company's technological capabilities, The Verge reported. The robot maker believes the robots' location technology can be used for different purposes, such as helping traffic control networks reduce accidents on the road.
"We believe that the wireless communication of sensor data could become a core infrastructure for the advanced integration of people and objects in smart societies," said Yuichi Kojima, senior vice president of Murata.
