GetRobo Blog English

ROBO-ONE Dancing Robots

 Biped Robot News Japan has lots of videos of dancing robots. Via Robots Dreams.

 My favorite.

Telepresent at iREX through the QB robot

 I didn't go to iREX this year, but I did get to see a bit of the action through Anybot's new telepresence robot QB.  

 QB is a simplified version of QA, costing one third of the price while maintaining the basic functions of the original robot. By making the design simpler, namely decreasing the number of motors from 6 to 2 and moving most of the electronics to the base, the price has now come down to 10,000 dollars. QB weighs 35 lb, 20 lb less than QA, and is height adjustable. All this makes QB easier to transport than QA. Anybots plans to commercialize QB by next spring.

    

   Anybots officially announced QB at iREX in Tokyo this week and I wanted to use the robot to interview people at the show. Trevor Blackwell, founder of Anybots, kindly agreed, and he came with his Mac so that I can operate QB from my home office. QB was being exhibited at the iREX booth by Innovation Matrix which will be the distributor in Japan. 

 And it was EXTREMELY FUN!!! I got to catch up with a couple of GetRobo readers that appeared at the booth and also chatted with vistors that were wandering around the exhibit floor. In general they were all pleased to be approached by QB and being asked questions from me in California (except for the 2 cases where I ran into them). They too had questions about the robot so I relayed them to Trevor and he was able to answer them real time. It worked out great! 

 So, although I don't see myself buying a 10,000 dollar robot anytime soon, I can imagine a future scenario where I would rent it by the hour so that I can visit places and do things that I would not normally be able to do. The feeling was a bit similar to doing interviews inside Second Life (which by the way I did do several years ago for a news article) but much more fun and of course real. In terms of approaching and interviewing complete strangers, I felt it was easier using a robot than doing it there myself. Even when I am rejected, I don't have to feel personal about it. :-)
  
 
 

Kokoro's Robotic Head and I-Fairy

 The International Robot Exhibition 2009 started today in Tokyo and you will be seeing lots of robot news coming out from my home town in the next couple of days. 

  Just in through Moriyama-san's blog,  Kokoro Company (know for the Actroid series)is announcing two new products.   

 One is a robotics head based on the technology they developed for Actroid.

 The other is the I-Fairy which is a robotic receptionist that looks like a character from a Japanese comic book. I-Fairy seems to still be just a "concept" and it is not clear at this point whether an actual robot will be present at the show.

   An update : Kokoro will formally be announcing the I-Fairy in Las Vegas in January at 2010 International CES.

 Another update: I-FAIRY makes it debut at CES 2010

Toyota's humanoid to explore moon by 2020?

 Just read Moriyama-san' blog which led me to another freelance journalist Otsuka-san's blog.

 He has put up copies of slides which were presented by an executive at Toyota during some kind of task force meeting that discusses Japan's direction/strategy in space exploration.

 The title of the presentation is "Realization of Moon Exploration Using Advanced Robots by 2020." There is an image (photo?) of what that robot might look like.

 
  The specification on the right says, weight 55kg (12kg 3kWh battery included), power consumption 0.4kW, 7 hours of operation. The yellow section lists

-joints are protected from regolith

-small capacity solar battery onboard

-internal status shows on screen on chest

-arms exchangeable for different tasks

-able to jump with springs in legs

-keeps warm during night covered in metal cloak

 Multiple robots will be sent to the moon to explore, do research and build stuff.

  There's a slide explaining how to get enough energy to feed the robots, but otherwise there are no details whatsoever on whether Toyota is actually trying to develop such robots. Most of you are familiar with these robots made by Toyota. I guess we have to wait until Otsuka-san or someone writes up a story about the meeting.

 There's one slide that's kinda funny which is titled "Merging Japanese Traditional Culture with Advanced Technology." Two robots are making a Japanese rock garden on the moon. Another is doing calligraphy (the character is "moon") looking at the earth. There's dango and tea, symbols for moon-viewing  in Japan.

 You can look at more slides here.