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The twin 2 1/2-foot-tall visitors to Carnegie Mellon University Friday danced a mean meringue and slipped into a Pittsburghese dialect while pining for a Primanti's sandwich and french fries from the "O."

Qrio, a 2-year-old humanoid robot and corporate ambassador for Sony Electronics Inc., wowed a packed house at the university's Campus Center with its fluidity of movement during preprogrammed dances.

Even its more labored efforts to locate, shuffle to and kick a small orange ball when left to its own wits -- relying on the two cameras behind its eyes and the 18 sensors scattered throughout its silver metallic body -- marked a significant improvement over herky-jerky cinema robots like C3PO from Star Wars.

Knock it over, as its handler did intentionally, and Qrio braces its fall with its hands, and within 15 seconds, brings itself upright.

But Sony Electronics President Hideki "Dick" Komiyama, in the region yesterday to show off Qrio, was quick to point out that Qrio will not soon be found in stores or even in the Nieman Marcus catalog of toys for the rich. It's purely a showpiece that flaunts the engineering found in other Sony Electronics products.

Qrio's motion sensors are the same that provide the steady-shot features of its video cameras. Its delicate actuator and motor assemblies come from Sony CD players.

Although Sony maintains strong ties with CMU through the university's Robotics Institute, and employs many CMU-trained engineers and computer scientists -- including Todd Kozuki, Qrio's handler, televisions are the primary focus of the company in this region.

Sony Technology Center-Pittsburgh in East Huntingdon and Hempfield townships, Westmoreland County, employs about 2,300 full-time workers in a television factory and adjacent plants that make TV glass screens and cathode ray tubes, as well as electronics adhesives and bar code chemicals.

Komiyama reiterated the importance of the facility to Sony Electronics, which has slumped of late.

Pointing to the complex's most recent new products, the rear projection Grand Wega liquid crystal display and plasma televisions in screen sizes up to 70 inches, which it is producing with components from Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., Komiyama said Sony Pittsburgh is a "very substantial" contributor to the company's U.S. and worldwide operations.

Sony has been criticized for being slow to recognize the consumer shift towards LCD and plasma televisions, as well as for arriving late to the digital music player wave that Apple is riding with its iPod.

Sony this week reported higher third-quarter earnings compared to a year ago, but the boost came largely from its mobile communications and entertainment content divisions, rather than its electronics hardware business, where sales fell about 1 percent.

Seema Patel, a graduate student at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, was impressed with the face and sound recognition, sensor and movement technology on display in Qrio, but said an animatronic robot she and some of her fellow students are developing named Quasi aspires to improve the artificial intelligence of robots so they can have more meaningful interactions with people.

She and her colleagues -- T.J. Jackson, Andy Hosmer and Peter Stepniewicz -- said they are working to provide a platform so nontechnologists can develop content for Quasi, which was built in 14 weeks on a shoestring budget.

"(Qrio) has amazing technology, but with Quasi, we're hoping to create the suspension of disbelief," she said.

Hosmer agreed, but said Qrio had some definite advantages over Quasi.

For one, "(Quasi) doesn't have legs."

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