The people studying at Matsue College of Technology [JP] (located in Matsue in Southern Japan) not only refuse to set up an English home page but also seem to have a strange sense of humor.

The video above shows three robots. The first one, a “silver mine exploration robot”, is actually quite useful as its small and agile enough to explore the tunnels of a silver mine closed for the public.

Matsue’s so-called instructional robot is geared towards first graders who are supposed to be motivated to learn more through playing around with it.

The real keeper, however, is the “comical robot” the college developed. You say “Ahhh” during a conversation, the robot hears it and all it does is dashing away. The robot is supposed to ease the tension between dialog partners by provoking laughter. Very funny, indeed.

The robots were presented to the general public SEMICON Japan 2008, the world’s largest expo forsemiconductor equipment and materials, that took place in Japan last week.

The Matsue College of Technology developed this comical robot for the purpose of promoting smoother interpersonal communications.