A wine-bot? What's next?

You might have noticed how not a single week passes without some cute-sy Japanese innovation making the news.

This week, it's the "wine-bot". "The what?", I hear you ask. Well, the "wine-bot", a creation of NEC Systems Technology and Mie University (yes, in Japan) is a robot-sommelier (see picture). It can "taste" and identify types of wine, and also discern and analyse foods.

Oh, woo hoo.

My rant today is about research priorities. If the Mie University scientists can come up with something like this, did they think of putting the technology to more productive use??

I remember seeing a Discovery channel documentary once about how some dogs can actually sniff out cancers even before they are diagnosed. There was a first-person account of a woman whose labrador started going batty around her leg. Shortly after that, when she went to the doctor, a tumour was found in that leg. Scientists then ascertained that some tumours do give off smells that dogs can detect.

My point is, if scientists can make a robot that can taste wine, it's a hop, skip and jump to making a robot that can sniff out early cancers, is it not?

Why do Jap scientists insist on coming up with not-terribly-useful inventions? The last dumb one was thumbdrives designed to look like sushi. And previous to that, there was a "robocarp" - a fully mechanical (metal) fish with fully-articulated fins.

Who is funding these scientists???

Quick, anyone, name me a Japanese scientist who's won a Nobel prize for an earthshaking discovery that makes life for humanity better. Can't think of any, ri...ight?

Japan: No other country comes close as Kitsch Central.