Bouncing Red Ball

Great videos of La Machine’s gigantic spiders prowling the streets of Yokohama. The giant arachnids from Nantes, France are part of the months-long program of events that celebrates the 150th opening of Yokohama Port.

In what might be a glimpse of the exciting possibilities of future robotics, Honda (Honda Research Institute - Japan) and ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research International) unveiled today an Asimo that can be controlled by mind power alone.

Using their jointly-developed Brain Machine Interface, which uses EEG (electroencephalography) and NIRS (near-infrared spectroscopy) to measure electrical impulses in [...]

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 [...]

Wakamaru, the boy-faced robot from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, debuts in a play staged at Osaka University in Japan. Entitled “Hataraku Watashi” (I, Worker), the play, written by playwright and Osaka University professor Oriza Hirata, explores the relationship of humans and the robots that are tasked to assist them in their everyday chores.
In the 20-minute play, [...]