Taiyo to sell voice-controlled toy helicopter

ntttttttttttt

Taiyo Co on Wednesday unveiled a voice-controlled toy helicopter at a Tokyo toy forum. “Radio-control toys haven’t changed for long time. We thought it would be fun to give vocal commands instead of hand operations,” marketing official Naoaki Koide said.

n

The company aims to achieve annual sales of more than 100,000 units, targeting middle-aged men who would play with the toy with their children.

n

The voice-command helicopter will be priced at 5,229 yen. The toy, which responds to both Japanese and English, will be launched in Asia, North America and Europe.

n

The user wears a headset to give five commands — “start engine,” “up,” “hold,” “down” and “stop.”

n

Voices are picked up by the microphone and transmitted to a microchip-equipped controller box, which radios the signal to the toy. The toy also comes with a conventional remote control.

n

The battery-charged toy is 18 centimeters long and can fly as far as 10 meters away from the operator.

tttttttntttntttntttttttttttt© Wire reportsnttttttttt