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The Japanese government just approved a master plan for the country's space development program. Here is the draft of the master plan. It talks about planning to send robots to the moon by 2020 for exploration, although it doesn't go into any details.
BUT, insider Sakigawara-san of the Future Robotics Technology Center at Chiba Institute of Technology says in his blog that the plan is to send biped humanoids up to the moon by 2020 so that they can build a base for exploration. Will humanoids be THAT capable by then?
I just found out about this video through freelance journalist Moriyama-san's super informative blog. First half of the video is still imaginary but the second half describes what is currently possible.
You can read about the project here. I support research in this direction. And we don't necessarily need humanoids to do everything for us.
ROBO-ONE's MARU Family has developed a new humanoid robot - the New King Kizer. Compared to the Great King Kizer, the new robot stands 6cm taller at 60cm but weighs about 30% lighter and is only 3kg. Although the two robots may look similar from the outside, the new robot "is a completely different machine developed from scratch," according to Naoki Maru (father of the MARU Family).
(Photo: The New King Kizer (left) with the Great King Kizer)
The goal was to develop a lighter robot that maintains the size and striking power of the Great King Kizer. To accomplish this, Naoki used the newest servo motor from Kondo Kagaku - the KRS-6003HV - and modified it himself to boost it's speed. The New King Kizer uses only 17 servo motors whereas the Great King Kizer had 35.
The basic frames are aluminum (so are the Great's) but thinner and Naoki also used PET (polyethylene terephthalate) where strength is not an issue. The blades are made of recycled PP (polypropylene).
You can watch the New King Kizer in action on Robot Watch. The robot made it's debut at the 15th ROBO-ONE competition. Although it ended up as one of the Best 8 and not the grand champion at this competition, it was able to show off it's new skills. This link shows the throw technique.
Also Naoki and some others recently brought their robots to Hong Kong for a demo. Below is a video from Hong Kong. Although the title of this video says "Great King Kizer," it is actually the New King Kizer.
Prof. Atsuo Takanishi's lab at Waseda University has deveopled a new robot called KOBIAN. He (I mean the robot) is very emotional. Just take a look.
Pink Tentacle already has a post on it. To add to that, KOBIAN is a combination of a couple of Prof. Takanishi's previous work - the walking humanoid WABIAN-2R and the emotion expression robot WE-4RII. According to this Nikkei story, robot maker Tmsuk played a part in the development too.
You can see more photos on Robot Watch, which explains that Waseda University has just opened up a new robotics center called the RT Frontier in Tokyo. KOBIAN appeared at the press conference of the new center's opening ceremony. RT Frontier is partially open to the public where you can see and touch some of the robots that are being developed for elderly care and rehab assistance purposes.
The founder and CEO of Speecys, Tomoaki Kasuga, was in Silicon Valley to give a presentation at TiEcon 2009. He is seeking 10 million dollars in funding to expand his business of developing and selling communication robots.
During his stay in California, he made public that his company has teamed up with toy maker Sega Toys to jointly commercialize a new robot by the beginning of 2010. It is not clear at this point whether the new robot will be a humanoid or not. But what is clear is that it will have the capability to hook up with the network to download all sorts of information using voice command. Speecys has come up with a system to enable that - watch the video below.
In the future, Speecy's cloud computing system will allow advertisers to send personalised ads to the robot users. "Think of it as a new friendly IT device. Friendlier than the PC." says Kasuga-san. The new robot is targeted to be in the 200-500 dollar price range.
Speecys had been working on the NNR-1, but according to Kasuga-san, they are now focusing on the project with Sega.
Below is a photo of Kasuga-san doing a demo at Tiecon.
