Social PC and Social Trash Box!!

Interaction & Communication Design Lab. of Toyohashi University of Technology is introducing various cute robots on YouTube. The following two movies give us sense of humor and get us to think of a future robot out of box. Enjoy the movies with their statement which is really agreeable.

"The physical appearances of creatures, artifacts, etc, are not essential for becoming a social partner within the daily lives of humans. We believe that a creature's social cues and behavioral feedback (based on user behavior) are a most indispensable component to inherit their social roles. Our SPC was invented as a social companion for users to create a more enjoyable environment through its verbal and non-verbal cues, for example, shaking its body, displaying an attractive motion and joint attention with the user, etc. SPC is capable of tracing a user's attention and environmental variants (information on the display) to interact and respond toward establishing rapport with its social companion. We believe that the above interactions will help to work and engage without creating boredom and stress during long periods of time as preferred by users."

Source: icd lab channel on YouTube

Comments

Spiral Magnus - a wind power generator

About one year ago, February 2008, I introduced at this blog site Spiral Magnus wind generator designed and manufactured by MECARO . It seems that the new generator is now in commercial production. The first commercial unit reportedly installed in Ogata Village, Akita Prefecture, Japan last November. This video is a brief presentation on the product. According to the supplier, MECARO , the strong advantage of Spiral Magnus are in low speed rotation, exceptionally quiet operation, long lasting durability as well as high efficiency and stability in power generation that have been enabled by Spiral Effect together with MECARO's patent technology. Typical specifications data extracted from the supplier's web site are as follows. Wind Turbine Diameter: 11.5m Rated Output: 12kW Rated Wind Speed: 11m/s Rated Rotor Speed: 30rpm Cut-in Wind Speed: 3m/s Cut-out Wind Speed: 30m/s Wind Load Survival Rate: 60m/s Source: MECARO's promotion video via Y

Radiation-Watch - Excellent Project Where Good Ideas Have Got Together

Radiation-Watch.org , an open and non-profit project formed up in Japan, took an excellent approach to develop and launched very inexpensive and smart radiation detectors to the international market. The organization is supported by a variety of people, such as scientists, engineers and designers on a global basis. The organization surprisingly enough to have designed, developed manufactured, and launched the first model, Pocket Geiger Type 1 within just three month soon after the team made its decision to get the thing done. All of the team members shared their own expertise on purely good will basis using their off-times, weekends and nights in weekdays. Needless to say, scientific, technological and engineering expertise the team members hold are the first class while there were three key factors for the successful fast launch of the high quality radiation detector. Firstly, they used Kickstarter to get financial support for the project. Using the system, Radiation-watch

Wireless High-definition Quality Video Transmission Units

This system that consists of a receiver (left) and a transmitter wirelessly enables HD (30 frames/sec) quality video and stereo sounds transmission but with no compression and no delay time. The supplier, Giga Techno Vision's blog says the system is well secured because of its proprietary and patented technologies that differ its digital modulation method from wireless LAN. - Frequency Area 2.4GHz - Transmission power: 10 mW - Radio Channel Capacity 4ch Maximum - Diversity Method: Space-diversity 2 antennas - Size (Tx & Rx each): 110(W) x 80(Ｄ) x 30(Ｈ)mm - Weight (Tx & Rx each): approximately 300g - Transmission distance: 500 m outdoors (up to 3 km) There seem to be various applications, such as remote monitoring, CCTV, home video theater application, surveillance systems, etc. I hope in the near future the system become one single chip for receiver and transmitter each. When the chip becomes available, it will significantly broaden its applications to personal and

ANS TechGlance

Search This Blog