Leave it to the Japanese to give us a voice controlled toy that makes you use an accent to control. Given my previous experience using voice recognition technology, I’m not so sure about this toy…

My last brush with voice recognition was the game “rainbow six: vegas”. For those of you who don’t know what the heck that is, it’s a tactical shooting game, where you have to take out a bunch of terrorists in Las Vegas. It has a voice recognition, meaning you can yell into your microphone and your guys will try to do what you tell them to… up to a point. You can say things like “wait here”, “go there” ,”follow me”, “stay”,etc… Sadly, you can say something that isn’t in the list of available options, and it will try to do something anyway. Apparently, “Oh Sh–!” means “go over there and get shot”. Let’s just say that it was easier to forget about the voice controls and stick with the good ol’ push button action.

I assume it isn’t going to be any easier with this toy, especially considering the commands:

To start up the engines, say “engine staato”, to shut the engines off, it’s “toe-mah-reh”. To go up, you say “appu”, but to fly down, you still say “down”. Go figure. You can always just hover by saying “holdo”.

taiyo voice-heli: voice control helicopter from japan [appu, appu and away] [technabob]

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on Voice Recognition Technology
• Huddled Masses › Control your PC with your voice … and PowerShell
• Look Ma!…No Controller! « Gold Star for Robot Boy

Leave it to the Japanese to come up with a decoration for your bottled water that you actually put in your bottled water. Yeah, it’s cute… and I could totally see some Japanese people using their water bottle as a fashion accessory.. half full of tiny toys. Though I do think that $6 is a bit steep for some plastic.

Toys for your bottled water [gadetech]