Departmental stores do not need to rely on those creepy looking kids who come in to be cashiers, as part of their summer-job stints. They have got themselves a cool new robot that does the job just as well. However, this one seems to have a slightly tortuous description that goes something like, ‘provide verbal guidance on how to scan merchandise at the checkout counter’. It’s called the PaPeRo and is a 15 inch tall interactive robot that can talk, tell stories and of course, count money. It comes in with NEC’s very own Twinpos E-Money Self-Checkout System.

The thing looks pretty cute (pardon me using ‘the word’) so having any gun-man threaten it is out of question. However if we do have such a miserable candidate owing to the world’s economic slide-down, this one won’t mind a few bullets in its chest.
[Cnet]