World News for Students of English

23-04-2015 07:00

She can smile and she can sing. Customers to Japan’s oldest department store chain are greeted by this robot who has just started work as a receptionist there.

She’s been programmed to speak Japanese but can also be fine-tuned to speak in Chinese and Korean, too. And the life-like android marked her first day at work with a song. Well, perhaps lip-synced her way through most of it.

After the performance, the robot asked for applause for the opera singer. Oops! Well, she’s just a robot, after all! For some of the visitors, the android was quite an eye-opener.

“I’m just so surprised that humans have developed machine engineering to this point.”

Her future is uncertain but she will be at the store’s entrance welcoming customers until May 5th. The company said it will decide next month whether humans will return to this post or not. But receptionists worldwide probably don’t need to worry too much. At the moment, she isn’t programmed to handle complaints or questions.

Difficult words: department store (a large shop which sells many different things), chain (a group of shops which are the same), fine-tune (to change), android (a robot with human appearance), lip-sync (to move the lips to a song, but not sing), machine engineering (creating machines), complaint (the act of complaining – saying that you do not like something).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com