ANS TechGlance

    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 ...

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

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

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

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 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

Honda unveiled a newly developed personal mobile tool, U3-X. It is reportedly said that U3-X is designed not to exceed 6km/hr as a maximum speed per hour and has capability to go up and down on a slop for pedestrians in offices or hospitals. Seeing is believing... 9/25/09

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...

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

A Japan national project, Japan Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Demonstration Project driven by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry demonstrates its result at the Fuel Cell EXPO 2009. It is important to point out that the result has brought up with a cross border collaboration involving not only Japanese auto manufactures, oil and gas suppliers but also US and Europe based companies, such as Toyota, Nissan, Suzuki, Mazda, General Motors, Mercedes Benz, Nippon Oil, Tokyo Gas and so on. Click here to see a video and text description for further details. Source: DigInfo 5/6/09

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

Bio-sensor that has been enabled by a combination of semiconductor technology and biotechnology.  According to this video, there will be a variety of applications considered while practical applications for mass production will be available in 2.5 to 3 years. Source: DigInfo via YouTube 3/23/09

How quickly to find a star or stars in the sky depends on clearness of the sky, whether conditions, knowledge level of a planisphere and on quality of an astronomical telescope. StellarWindow seems to ease us quickly to find a star by putting up a flat panel screen (actually tablet pc ) with which an USB type sensor is connected and StellerWindow software is installed. This fantasy animation video well present on how to use it. According to the supplier, 3 TEC , the package price which includes the software package and the USB device but excludes the tablet PC, is Japanese Yen25,000.- plus consumption tax within Japan. Source: 3 TEC Corporation & its groups' page 3/6/09

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

Playing music, it's dancing by itself! "Miuro" is the name. Seeing is Believing! Let's take a look at a YouTube video, I'm attaching here. It seems to me that this robot is one of typical examples of hi-tech-integration. This is cute, isn't it? I'd buy it if its price would be within my budget. 10/1/07