ANS TechGlance

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

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 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

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

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

A micro-3-axis- MEMS touch sensor jointly developed by Tokyo University and Panasonic received an award of "Robot of the year 2008" announced by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The MEMS chips enable robotic fingers to sense a very small amount of vertical and horizontal pressure values, as well as shearing forces of material. Source: DigInfo News via YouTube 2/4/09

It seems that a robot must be an excellent tool for students to learn engineering ideas. "e- nuvo ", an educational robot series supplied by ZMP INC must be the one. It was first launched in 2004, and since then, over 300 units have been used in educational facilities and research laboratories in Japan and foreign countries. This robot was an award winner at the 2008 Robot Award held in Tokyo. The supplier, ZMP INC. offers a few other robotic products, such as " muro " which is a network music player equipped with robotic technology, " ＰＩＮＯ ". an interactive humanoid robot, etc. Source: DigInfo news via YouTube ZMP's web-site 1/27/09

Another one, an advanced humanoid robot, is actually a toy but with it you'll just forget time passing. The 16.5cm-tall and 350g-weight robot is programmable and driven with rechargeable batteries. Its price seems to be within a very reasonable range. Several key technologies developed for the robot seem to be applicable for other industrial products. Enjoy it! Source: DigInfo News Takara - Tomy's web-site 1/16/09

An active scope camera proposed here is a rescue robot. Covering the entire cable of robot in cilia , the camera is capable to propel itself forward if the cable is contacting with the surface. According to this video reported by DigInfo, some discussions and technology evaluation are in process for commercial production. Source: DigInfo News via YouTube 1/15/09

I wonder why this kind of machine has not been available until now. It seems that there is no special technology required. But if you think of its sofisticated movement, there must be a variety of consideration needed to create this. It will be helpful for people who have some handicaps or stay on the bed for quite a long time but love to read books. I hope it will be further improved, become popular and be available with a reasonable price level. 1/2/09

It seems to become real that your avatar directly communicates with your family members in their living room even if you are away from them because of your international business trip. Speecys Corporation , a unique humanoid robot developer, plans to deliver BotCast generation media robot, NNR-1, early next year, 2009. According to Speecys' description , "BotCast uses the connection between the PC, internet, and servers to control robots' movements and sounds, providing a new form of media entertainment. Starting in June 2008, our BotCast service will be available as beta testing for you to enjoy in your home. Next spring, our Home Media Robot will be released at a low, accessible price to be enjoyed by families." The home media robot, or BotCast generation media robot will be assisting users in their live communications over the Internet, in delivering and/or getting information a user needs, or in administrating user's business schedule, while many other way...

Out of many types of humanoid robot available in the market, I found it very impressive. It has a variety of capabilities. It speaks, recognizes human voice, walks, dances, searches and reads aloud emails and web-site information for a user, and does more, being controlled over the internet as far as wireless broadband environment is secured for the robot. With a video camera build in, it has image recognition capability as well. It is small (33 cm height) and light (1.5 kg), but could work as an avatar located in a distance place and provides a pleasant escape from the routine of everyday life. Imagine a jazz band of four robot players! You can see a video movie clicking a picture you can get here. More importantly, the robot capability can be continuously enhanced and grown by users, who might be used to pc-software development, because the application development software interface is opened for that purpose at no cost. A type number of the robot is SPC-101C, designed and supplied b...

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