Bouncing Red Ball

From IT labs to photo grabs, Japanese humanoids will soon be strutting their hard- and soft-wares on the fashion catwalk.
HRP-4C runs on battery-powered motors in her body and face, designed to give her the expressions, gait and attitude of a supermodel.
An interesting humanoid no doubt, but probably has little chance of upstaging Kate Moss and [...]

If you stroll along the back streets of Akihabara and visit robot sites on the Internet fairly often, it would seem that tiny robots that do increasingly sophisticated little things are popping up regularly in Japan.
Take this interesting pet robot for single geeks announced by Robo Engine the other day.

Diminutive Pyuuun (Weee! in English) uses [...]

Robot venture tmsuk and security company Alacom has announced the T-34, a security guard robot that can be remotely controlled through a cellphone and can fire a net at suspected intruders.

The T-34 security guard robot is fitted with infrared heat and sound sensors to detect the presence of intruders or sense unusual activity. If it [...]

Christmas in Japan is not the kind of family-centered, traditional, religious celebration that it is in many parts of the world. Heck, I even have to go to work on Christmas Day.
No, the Japanese Christmas is mostly about packed stores, eating a Christmas supper of KFC chicken and Christmas cake ordered from the local supermarket.
(Woe [...]

On December 18, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan has announced Takara Tomy’s i-Sobot as “Robot of the Year” for 2008. The award was established by METI in 2006 to promote civilian development and practical application of robots.
This year 65 were chosen to represent robots from the agriculture, construction and service [...]

So is this the end to who’s-doing-the-dishes arguments?
The Information and Robot Technology Research Initiative of Tokyo University, in cooperation with Panasonic, announced on December 17 an arm-shaped robot that… wait, it doesn’t even wash the dishes: it just puts them inside the dish washing machine.

To help it grasp the most delicate of china, this kitchen [...]

The recently held International Next Generation Robot Fair in Osaka saw the introduction of the Cardboard Mannequin Robot, a collaboration between robot development venture Eager and packaging design company Joto.
The robot, which is mainly constructed of cardboard, was developed with the slogan “world’s weakest robot” in mind. It is the kind of robot that a [...]

The Japanese are getting older and the population is shrinking. There is virtually no incoming immigration of foreigners to alleviate the decreasing workforce in one of the top economies of the world. Are robots the solution? Is Japan where the rise of robots going to happen?

The rise of robots in Asia
Japan leads the world in [...]