ANS TechGlance

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

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

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 of Japan (AIST) announced iCubeSpace, a system which enabled an operator to feel and touch to control a virtual obstacle on 3D display panel. According to the spokes person on the TV news, possible application areas will be ranging from TV gaming, training for surgical operations to virtually touching an art object displayed in an famous museum. The press release is only in Japanese so far.  In the meantime, a DigInfoTV picked up the news at CEDEC 2010 held in Yokohama last week. The TV news available on YouTube is here although it's only in Japanese, too. Source: AIST's New Release,   DigInfoTV news via YouTube 9/7/10

The new humanoid robot FUJISOFT recently announced seems to be quite smart and intelligent. According to the news release, PALRO®, the new robot of which height and weight are 39.8cm and 1.6kg respectively, is capable naturally to communicate with people and autonomously to move around as required. The software platform build into PALRO® enables to enhance PALRO®'s functional capabilities to be a personal conserge to provide a variety of services and information. PALRO® will be released to the education market first on March 15, this year. For the consumers, it will be availabe in the middle of 2010, FUJISOFT says.   A price tag shows Japanese Yen 298,000 for the education market model. Source: FUJISOFT News Release 2/2/10

There must be a variety of leading edge technologies and components required for Smart Grid which is recently assumed as the next generation electric power distribution network. Electric power has been supplied by an electric power company to every building or facility wherever needed. "Internet" is often used as an analogy of Smart Grid since various information generators are connected to the internet . In this context, the electric power supply network has been used as "down load" only while Smart Grid will enable us to download and upload of the electricity for multiple directions as the information traffic flows on the internet . An important difference from Internet , however, Smart Grid has to assure stable and continuous power supply without no delay. No "Best Effort" is allowed on Smart Grid. Smart Grid sounds pretty smart and beautiful as written and pronounce. However a huge amount of new technologies and efforts for standardizat...

There are many companies that focus on assisting people in enhancing quality of life. KGS Corporation founded in 1953 keeps developing and suppying new ideas of products for visually impaired persons. Braille Memo, BM16, as an example, looks an excellent device of portable notebook with which a user can take a memo at anyplace anytime. According to the product description, it equips convenient accessories functions such as a clock, an electronic calculator and a calendar that enable a user to manage indispensable information on daily basis. Electrical communications interface of BM16 is reportedly limited to RS232C. More compact and handy type of Braille Memo Pocket seems to be available now, and it has USB and Bluetooth interfaces, so that wireless communications capability is obviously available between the pocket sized Braille memo device and a personal computer. This type of devices are not showy but very important technology products to help us improve our lives in the so...

" Metamaterials ", artificial materials, seem to have great potential to create brand new and unprecedented applications for our future life. The electro -magnetic properties of Metamaterials could be artificially controlled by using metal nano -structures, so that refractive index could be changed or controlled. This suggest that we may be able directly to see virtual view, such as something beautiful flowers behind the screen of obstacle, or virtually to create a transparent person who might wear clauses made by Metamaterials . Source: Metamaterials Laboratory's page of RIKEN web-site 7/21/09

Brain waves control a wheelchair. The new signal processing technology for brain machine interface (BMI) has reportedly been a recent result of collaboration activities among RIKEN, Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Central R&D Labs and Genesis Reserch Institute have jointly announced that BSI-TOYOTA Collaboration Center. This seems to be a big step for the next generation robotics. 7/3/09

Ultra-high speed video camera systems demonstrated by Keyence reportedly provides 24,000 frames per second, that can analyse extremely high speed movement. High-tech just keeps enhancing its capability. Source: DigInfo News via YouTube 6/15/09

Tribute to digital technologies, there seems to be no boundary between a photo shooting camera and video camera. A major camera supplier like Canon announced the dual functions camera while major consumer electronics devices manufactures, such as Sony and Panasonic that have video cameras as one of major product portfolio are starting to sell newly developed dual-mode camera. NOTE: This YouTube video will be replaced with an English version soon. Source: DigInfo via YouTube 4/7/09

There are a few good sites that well summarize a trend of Japanese science and technologies in English. This video site created by National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology ( AIST ) is one of the good ones. Its URL is http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/video/ . More sites would be expected to be provided by many other organizations maintaining at least this level of quality in English. 3/5/09

A range of player's age may be unlimited. Interesting in technologies used behind this game. Source: DigInfo News 2/26/09

Seeing is better than reading.  This is a new music video game supplied by Konami.  Source: DigInfo via YouTube 2/26/09

Nanotechnology Research Institute, a part of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology ( AIST ) announced on October 14, 2008 that it successfully developed a mobile type of super ink-jet equipment.   According to the released information , the equipment is almost 1/600 in cubicle dimensions of those currently available and is driven at 5V (DC).    It is expected that this technology will significantly contributes to reducing energy consumption as well as volumes of ink.  Application areas of this technology will vary ranging from electronics manufacturing processes to security fields where high precision printing technology is required.    Source: AIST's press release 1/11/09

This  film production, " EIGOPETS " developed by Exsa Corporation , seems to be more than a tool for learning names of animals in English. As presented, it hints various business possibilities .   This tool reminds me of Leapfrog's products .   Is there any collaboration opportunity between the two companies?   Source: DigInfo News 12/8/08

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 ...

There are several types of smart pens available in the global market.   The most recent ones may be called a ballpoint pen type of personal computer .   Despite of the highly advanced functionalities , however, none of the smart pens has capability to sense and record pen pressure data with itself. DP-1000 electric pen developed and supplied by Japan System Development ( JSD ) has the capability to sense and digitized the data, so that the pen pressure data will be easily recognized and analyzed by computer when it is used for writing or drawing something on a paper sheet .  According to JSD's web-site , proprietary and patented technologies are used for DP-1000.   My curiosity is, if the pen pressure sensing technology is built into a smart pen, the integrated product may perhaps create various applications which will be more than the deveopers' expectation.  I hope I'll see it sometimes in the future. 11/13/08

TOMY has announced a new digital camera that has a built-in printer inside.  It is a full-featured 5 Megapixel digital camera with a built-in full color ZINK (trademark)  priner that is powered by ZINK Imaging Inc's printing technology.    The new product has been born by the marrige of the two technologies of digital camera and printer.  It allows you to capture, view, and immediately print their images without ink, anywhere.   The new products will be available first in Japan late November, 2008.   Source: ZINK Imaging & YouTube 11/6/08