Decius wrote:
] ] Japanese researchers in robot technology are advocating a
] ] grand project, under which the government would spend 50
] ] billion yen a year over three decades to develop a
] ] humanoid robot with the mental, physical and emotional
] ] capacity of a 5-year-old human.

That would be US$722 million per year for 30 years, several orders of magnitude larger in scope than the Japanese "Fifth Generation Computer Project", a $100 million, eight-year effort to capture the world lead in the field of supercomputers by 1991. The FGCP had a considerable focus on Prolog and AI. It seems unlikely that Japan would undertake a program of this size given their current economic situation.

RE: Japan's big robot project