Attention business owners: Do you find when customers get trapped in the fifth circle of your voicemail hell, they're just not as irate as they used to be? Do you long for a new way to make your company impersonal while simultaneously appealing to raging dorks?

Good news on that front: Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. is now renting out its "wakamaru" robots to work your office front desk for $1,000 a day (for up to five days). The company originally sold the robots (which vaguely resemble giant Legoland escapees) in 2005 for $13,000.

If we trust robots to babysit our kids, surely they can fill in for the receptionist. Who needs a sentient being to greet clients when you can have 3-foot-tall, bright yellow worker bee that zips around at about 0.6 miles per hour, recognizes 10,000 words and speaks basic sentences? Your temp worker probably can't top that. — Sandra Swanson

Via Physorg