QUEUEING outside what appears to be an ordinary cinema, members of the audience are invited to place their faces into a hole in the wall for a few seconds.

High-resolution digital cameras perform a quick scan from several angles, and everyone takes their seats.

The animated film, with the quality of Shrek or Toy Story, begins as normal but the entire cast is made up of walking, talking digital replicas of people in the audience.

A grandmother in the second row was surprised to discover that her screen persona was a space commando, barking out orders to a squadron that comprised her daughter-in-law and a young couple in the fourth row.

Everyone in the cinema gets a role in the unfolding drama — there are soldiers, doctors, scientists and politicians involved in the story — as a Toshiba supercomputer hums away in the background processing the one-time-only film.

Welcome to Aichi Expo 2005, which showcases the next generation of technology. Over the next six months more than 15 million visitors will marvel at the 21st century’s first world exposition, built at a cost of £1.6 billion and which includes virtual reality shows, cultural displays and performances by humanoid robots.

No fewer than 121 countries are taking part, but Aichi Expo is principally about Japan, which has pulled out all the technological stops to show that its gadgetry and ingenuity is the best in the world.

Opposite Toshiba’s digital cinema is Hitachi’s virtual reality safari. Hitachi equips visitors with portable handsets that contain a prototype of its mu-chip, a processor slated to become the key component of future wireless devices, including mobile phones.

As the handset is brought close to particular transmitters, it instantly downloads any information on offer in that area and displays it on a small screen.

The safari ride itself employs a revolutionary 3D projection system designed to work with a set of sensors strapped to the hands. Once immersed in the virtual reality world, solid-seeming objects can be plucked from mid-air and examined more closely in the hands.

A rare butterfly, for example, can be persuaded to land in one's palm and then be looked at from any angle. Release your fingers, and it flutters off to join its companions back in the VR jungle.

Other gadgetry that went on display for the first time yesterday included object-recognition binoculars created by NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile phone company.

As users scan the surrounding area, the binoculars will recognise certain objects and details about them will appear in the eyepiece.

Fix on a passing plane, for example, and the machine will tell you the flight number and destination. Turn your attention to a flower, and it will tell you what variety it is.

The machine contains a 360-degree “radar” to point you in the direction of things that it knows it already has information on.

DoCoMo hopes to use the technology in camera-equipped handsets. With particular databases of information installed, the phones could be pointed at objects of interest and used to collect information. Waved past an item in a shop, for example, it might inform users where the same thing could be bought more cheaply.

But perhaps the strongest influence over the Aichi Expo is exerted by Toyota, currently the world's most successful carmaker, and by far the largest company in the Aichi region of Japan. Britain and the US dragged their heels over involvement in the expo, and it is generally thought that it was Toyota's pressure that persuaded them to join in.

Toyota’s show, for which visitors must queue for several hours, focused on the classic Japanese theme of robots. The company has, invested millions upon millions of dollars in robotics research, partly for its factories, and the results were eerily human.

One robot strolled into the arena and then balanced on one leg, another flexed a perfectly jointed hand in the air before playing a trombone.

Darting in and out of these characters were Toyota's latest i-Unit concept cars — single-seaters that move in total silence — and a sedan chair that carries a person around on two robotic legs.

Amid the spectacle, though, there was a deliberately serious message about how these robots will enter everyday life. As the robots performed their various feats, it became increasingly easy to see them as household objects — particularly in a country such as Japan where the population is ageing very quickly. If a robot can pick up a French horn and scoot around an arena, could it not also bring its master a tray of food from the kitchen?

At the other end of things, it may ultimately be Toyota's industrial robotics that help Japanese manufacturers to deal with the fact that there are simply fewer people being born to work in industry.

STAR ATTRACTIONS UP FOR THE COUNT

25 Number of minutes it takes to walk from the entrance to the British pavilion

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