I t must say something about the times when a news release heralding yet another piece of cutting-edge Japanese technology makes us scratch our heads and think how quaint and last-century it sounds. That happened last week when we read about Hitachi Ltd.'s rollout of a wheeled humanoid robot that it calls an "Emiew," presumably pronounced "emu."

Sadly, the two prototypes that Hitachi has built for the World Expo in Aichi Prefecture, which opens Friday, are not motorized versions of Australia's heraldic, flightless, long-legged bird. That would have been truly avant-garde. Instead, Pal and Chum, as they are called, have the basic look of every robot since the imaginary Steam Man, circa 1865: person-shaped mechanical creatures sporting "faces" and "arms" and blankly helpful "expressions."

Long-legged the Emiews are not. They are not even short-legged. What makes them cutting-edge and next-generation, according to Hitachi, is their wheels, which enable them to zip about in the service of their human masters at about 6 kph, the equivalent of a moderate-to-brisk walking speed.