GetRobo Blog English

Marriage of Robotics with Handicraft

 Engineer and electronics shop owner Osamu Iwasaki who's been building robots for some time is currently interested in using "soft material" for his machines. His newest work is the RoboKnit which is a collaboration with Hanakomet who did the knitting. 

 

 A little while ago, Iwasaki-san worked with textile artist Tomoco Mouri to make the Kinetic Quilt.  He used a Lilypad Arduino, one $12 servo motor and piano wire and it took him about an hour to build this.

 He is fascinated with what in Japan is now called "extreme handicraft" which seems to have a strong following of its own. You can see examples of this art form here and there's even a group called  O-DA-I Craft where someone comes up with a theme and people send in photos of their work according to that theme.

 So why combine handicraft with robotics?

 People's reactions to these kinds of robots is what motivates Iwasaki-san. The RoboKnit is "Cute!" and many children gathered around when he was filming the video at the park.  On the other hand, the general impression of the Kinetic Quilt was "Creepy~~." "If they were just made of motors and metal, people would've reacted differently. I'm curious to find out what kind of movements and structure make people react in certain ways," he says.

Doll Robot Dances to the Polka

 Alice - the 60 cm (24 inches) tall doll robot - dances to the Ievan Polkka tune. Music was composed using MIDI.

 Found out from NODE that you can find the DancingDoll's website here. According to the information on this page, the robot uses 25 servo motors, a 2-axis gyro sensor and a 3-axis accelerometer. So the inside is STUFFED with components but it still manages to fit into a doll outfit. Movements are programmed by a PC and it can walk with its two legs. You can also operate it with the PlayStation 2 cordless controller.

  

WOW!! Gymnastic Robot has New Stunt

Where can I buy MANOI GO?

 Since the MANOI GO made a performance at the ROBO-ONE GATE dance competition late last month, GetRobo has received several emails asking about where they can purchase this robot.  

 So I asked Sadahiro Arai - owner of the robot shop Technologia in Akihabara Tokyo. MANOI GO was developed by  MANOI producer Masayuki Okamoto and robot builder Dr. GIY. It's not meant to be a mass produced product but they are willing to customize and sell it to you for about 300,000 yen (about $3,400 in today's exchange rate).  It will include all the motion data and clothing but NOT the head spin component, which is too bad because I think most of the people that wanted to buy this were interested in the head spin. The reason for that is because the head spin component needs to be adjusted each time and they won't be able to provide the maintenance/support after they sold you the robot. 

 If you are still interested in owning this robot, please contact Arai-san at Technologia  or GetRobo. Meanwhile here is a video from the recent dance competition.

Speecys and Sega Toys to come out with new communication robot

 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.