ANS TechGlance

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.  Usin...

    Metrol is a unique and leading company specialized in manufacturing ultra precision switches used for position detection and dimension discrimination, and owns international patents. Metrol's products are quite unique and structurally different from the conventional limit switches, proximity sensors, and photoelectric sensors.     The company's strength is not only in its products and technologies but also in its global market coverage where Metrol's market share has reached at a 70 percent market.  Achieving the rate is uneasy unless taking a variety of sales methods. Take for instance, Metrol has more than 50 sales partners, while holding a few sales offices outside of Japan.  The company also effectively uses Internet technology such as Email marketing, on-line sales for a limited products, etc.  Metrol is categorized as a technology based SME, but its approaches are quite dynamic while its technologies are, needless to say, supporting ...

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 w...

This reminds me of the famous movie film screened more than 40 years ago.  HAL was the name of computer that kicked out people from the space ship because it learnt the people's minds from their lips that they had questions on HAL's loyalty. Growing with further development of hardware and software capabilities, this humanoid robot may have the capability that controls real humans. I hope it will not come true and real even in the future space where highly intelligent humanoid robots will have to have strict limitation not to control humans. 8/24/11

It used to be a dream for us to speak in our own language on the phone with any people who may not understand our language.  The dream seems to be becoming real at least between Japanese and English on a mobile phone network.  The accuracy of the simultaneous interpretation is reportedly not perfect yet, but that'd be OK as far as the accuracy is in a reasonable range. For the time being, the text messages simultaneously displayed on the phone screens in the both languages will help to avoid potential misunderstanding which might be caused by inaccurate interpretations. If bandwidth allows to accommodate this simultaneous interpretation and video phone capability, it'd be more helpful. 8/22/11 Source: DiginfoTV via YouTube

We are receiving many emails, kind words and notes from outside of Japan.  Two typical messages say, " I do believe that your country people can overcome all the problems, above all, for Japan, the characteristic of your people is united & pursuit the best level all the time, where is valued to be respected." and " Japan is a strong and industrious nation, people would get through from such disasters  We believe it will recover soon.  Please accept our deepest sympathy and convey our best wishes to all of you" The magnitude of the earthquake that hit Japan has been reportedly the largest in the recorded history. No one can measure an overall impact to Japan society caused by the natural disaster at this point.  Finding more, the damages becomes bigger. We still are  in rescue and fact finding modes. However, i t’s for sure that the Japan society should be able to overcome the extraordinary difficulties, alt...

This seems to be a typical product made by a sophisticated consortium formed up by The Niigata Industrial Creation Organization, Hitachi,  Takei Scientific Instruments Co.,Ltd. and NEDO.  The Niigata  The Niigata Industrial Creation Organization and Hitachi reportedly provided Takei with exercise methods and robot technology, which they developed as part of a project funded by NEDO.  In general "exercise" is "exercise" and it's sometimes boring. Building entertainment functions into the training or exercising process is good for continuous effort of exercising for a long time although it seems to be a matter of cost and performance. Source: DigInfo TV via YouTube 2/7/11

This newly designed EV look good for entertainment and hobby but could be quite useful for sightseeing in traditional cities in Japan, like Kyoto, Nara etc. It might be also applicable in East Asia, too. A price plan sounds quite reasonable. Try it? Source: DigInfo Tv via YouTube 2/7/11

Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute (AIST) announced that Humanoid Research Group of AIST had developed new software, "Chorenoid", to directly generate and edit the whole-body motion of a humanoid robot. Its news release says, " This software automatically and instantaneously converts a sequence of humanoid poses (key poses) input by the user to a dynamically stable movements, enabling a user without knowledge of robotics to generate various humanoid movements easily in a similar manner to the generation of a computer graphic character's motions. This technology is expected to contribute to the creation of new content industries using humanoid robots. " The following video demonstrates a dancing cybernetic humanoid robot HRP-4C. It is expected that the software will create a new market for TV, PCs,  games and other entertainment areas. Source: AIST's news release 1/9/11

Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) announced on November 24, 2010 that AIST successfully demonstrated  operations of  a new type of organic photovoltaic devices (solar cells organic) using optical absorption due to charge transfer between the different organic molecules.  Organic solar cells are expected as new technology for manufacturing solar cell sheets that can be bent, lightweight, and now, have been actively studied and developed worldwide.  This time,  successful photoelectric conversion from near infrared light over the wavelength of one μm  was confirmed using the  photovoltaic devices fabricated using organic molecules consisting of two molecules. This technology based on the new principle w ill enable more effective energy conversion from the light to electricity. Source: AIST's News Release (Japanese) 12/1/10

RIKEN has announced that its researchers have   successfully developed a revolutionary new polymer film that changes shape upon irradiation with UV and visible light.  The announcement continues, " Described in  Science , the film is the largest-ever example of a material whose molecular elements are ordered in three dimensions on a macroscopic length scale, marking a breakthrough in techniques for molecular design and processing." When this technology becomes popular, the direct conversion of light energy into a mechanical force may enable us to obtain a highly efficient energy conversion method from the solar light energy. Source: RIKEN News Release 11/17/10

New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) announced today that NEDO and the World Bank singed an agreement on the implementation of cooperative activities in the field of energy and environmental technology in October 21, 2010.  According to the announcement, the agreement allows both parties to jointly implement the cooperative activities in an effort to resolve global energy and environmental issues through technology demonstrative project that NEDO is promoting to encourage energy conservation as well as to introduce renewable energy sources, in addition to the collaborative activities within the scope of the ECO2 2010 Cities Initiative launched by the World Bank (  www.worldbank.org/eco2  ). NEDO has been taking initiatives on experimental projects of renewable energy and energy saving in Asia and other countries.  The agreement is expected to accelerate to promote sustainable urban development and low carbon economies and societies....

Nova Energy, an entrepreneurial company based in Hyogo Japan, developed tidal power generation systems and started its trial testing off the coast of Awaji City in the first half of the year  2010. The key component of the system is a tuna shaped turbine "MAGURO TURBINE", of which type number NT-001 has a 6-meter-long body with a 3 meter-diameter of propeller, is designed to generate 10kw at 3 knot tide current speed.　Maguro Turbine is not actually for generating electric power but to generate oil pressure power which is transformed to rotate oil turbines for electric power generation. 　For a country surrounded by the sea, like Japan, there could be huge potential to use the sea power of clean energy.  We do hope the trial will be successfully completed together with a reasonable cost performance result. Source: News archives on Nova Energy's  web site (Japanese)              A TV program uploaded on YouTube (Japanese) 10/7/...

New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) has announced that the organization, working together with a group of School of Information Science, Hokkaido University, successfully developed a newly structured rotor segment type of axial-gap motor for use of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV).  The output performance of the new motor is comparable with the conventional rare-earth magnet motor although its magnetic material consists of ferrite magnets only without using any rare earth.  A result of actual load testing under a constant torque range shows 51.5KW which is equivalent to conventional HEV battery performance. This technology has been developed as a part of "technology development for the next generation high performance  automobile  battery systems ".   The new technology has strong potential to relieve auto-manufacturers from extremely competitive situation in procurement of the rare-earth material which is supposed to be...

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has announced that the institute successfully developed the electron holography method stereoscopic technology which enables the ultimate viewing zone angle of 15 degrees and 4 cm diagonal display size color video display .  In this development, by applying its own display technology to increase viewing area to high-resolution device with  3300  mega-pixels, the newly developed device is able to gain three time wider viewing zone angles than  conventional devices and about two times broader two times broader video  holographic display. It seems that 3D video display technology development is accelerated to bring us to a virtually "real" world without glasses. Source: NICT's news release (Japanese) 9/28/10

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has announced  that Kawada Industries, Inc. and AIST have jointly developed  a platform for working humanoid robot: HRP-4 (below "HRP-4").   Kawada Industries developed the hardware of HRP-4 while AIST was in charge of control software development for the humanoid robot.  HRP-4  uses the high-density mounting technology  which was developed for CybernetichHuman HRP-4C, and realizes flexibilities of 7 arm action levels and 34 levels of flexibilities in total with its height of 151 cm and weight of 39 kg achieved. It's a slim and light weight body.  HRP-4 has open interfaces to accommodate a number of software developed for national and international robotic systems.  The successful development of HRP-4 is expected to   accelerate next-generation robot system research and development in the robotics industry. The following YouTube video demonstrates a par...

New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) announced that  a team of  Ritsumeikan University, Admatechs, Crystal Optics, and Kokonoe Electric working on a NEDO's project of  "Development of alternative materials for rare metals" ( a part of rare earth) has successfully developed new materials and technologies to reduce the consumption of cerium. Cerium, which is mostly produced in China, is critical abrasive material in the process of manufacturing glass for LCD TV display panels. The new abrasive material  is expected to free the glass panel manufacturers from dependency of the rare earth material of cerium. Source: NEDO's press release (in Japanese) 9/20/10

The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) announced that its Magnetic Materials Center developed a method for increasing  the coercivity of neodymium magnet powder without using dysprosium (hereinafter, Dy). Dy is a heavy rare earth element that is normally essential for achieving high coercivity in neodymium magnets for traction motors of hybrid vehicles (HV).    NIMS says that this technology developed  led to an increase in coercivity of more than 20% without using any heavy rare earth elements such as Dy.   According to the NIMS' press release, 90% of Dy is almost dominantly produced in PRC.  Hopefully, this technology will relieve us from the absolute dependency on the single country at least. Source:  NIMS Press Release 9/9/10

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) announced that its Universal Research Center in Keihannna Research Labs developed a novel table-style 3D display called "fVisiOn". According to the news release, the 3D display floats virtual 3D objects on a blank flat tabletop surface like a centerpiece and allows multiple viewers to observe the standing 3D images from any angle without the use of 3D glasses, and its observation style is especially designed for tabletop tasks assuming seated condition. As the technology being further blushed up and improved, NICT expects that the technology will be applied in a variety of fields, such as urban planning, traffic control, disaster prevention, medical surgical operations training, round table discussion on an object or material using the 3D virtual images in front. I, this blog writer, would expect that the technology must be evolve to create a 3D virtual object which people at a round table wi...

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology of Japan (AIST) announced that its collaboration research team has developed a communication technology which uses the direct current (DC) power line of a solar panel as a communication line. The newly developed communication technology is expected to be used for monitoring of power generation in each solar panel, easy detection of malfunctions and high-efficiency power generation, etc.  Technologies of solar energy generation seem to be moving one step further intelligently to control and maintain the solar panel unit.  For details of the news announcement, please click here. Souse: AIST News Release 9/8/10