The artificially intelligent Tachikoma combat vehicle from the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (S.A.C.) animation series is coming to life this summer.
The startup who breathe life into the smart toy is Japanese hardware developer Cerevo – having previously invented a number of smart home electronics and IoT products.
Tachikoma comes in the line of Cerevo’s Screen to Reality (S2R) project as its second anime-inspired technology, following the production of Dominator from Psycho-Pass last year.
Cerevo’s ongoing project S2R project aims to reproduce unique, real world connected versions of devices that appear in works of animation, games, and movies through using home electronics technology.
In any case, Tachikoma is made just like the original, being able to recognize what is said and respond accordingly, though obviously smaller than the one in the series, at a 1/8 scale.
It is entirely motorized, has sound, lights, and inbuilt cameras. It even connects itself to the internet via WiFi, which allows it to be able to speak, learn, and share information with other mecha bots.
Tachikoma’s object and speech recognition functions are fairly interesting. For example, when a user shows an apple to Tachikoma, and says, “apples are sweet,” the information that “apples are sweet” will be uploaded to the cloud and shared among all of the Tachikomas.
As users increase and more information are shared, Tachikomas will gradually becomes smarter, which is somewhat reminiscent of the world presented in the Ghost in the Shell movie.
Then again, the best part of Tachikoma is that it is voiced by the original Japanese voice actress who did the Tachikomas in S.A.C. Cevero has inivited Sakiko Tamagawa to record over 600 lines to accurately recreate the adorable Tachikoma persona from the series.
All of this comes at a cost of 157,400 yen before tax, that is about US$1,414. The startup has begun accepting pre-orders on their website and shipment is scheduled for June this year.
By Vivian Foo, VCNewsNetwork
