Kokoro's I-FAIRY made its debut in Las Vegas last week.
Well, I guess it must be hard to make a manga-type character come to life using plastic and motors. And if it were a manga character, she looks like she has a hangover when her forehead turns blue.
PUREX Co., a company in Japan that makes automation machinery for the linen supply industry, has developed a laundry handling robotic system that they aim to commercialize by 2013. In the real world, most of the linen handling has already been automated but the company is trying to robotize the one process that still need human hands. That is, picking up the clean linen one by one and placing it on the machine that smooths them out.
One arm picks up a piece of towel from the pile and lays it on a conveyor belt to make it easier to detect and grab the corner of the towel. The towel is handed and slided over to another arm that holds the edges and places it correctly on the finishing machine.
PUREX's parent company is TOKAI, a linen supply service provider, so they will have no problem looking for a customer. Right now the system can only handle one type of linen at a time, but the goal is to become able to handle different things - from towels to sheets to gowns - all at once.
Via Robonable
Associate Professor Takafumi Matsumaru at the Bio-Robotics & Human-Mechatronics Lab at Shizuoka University has come up with a new way to control mobile robots. He is envisioning cases in which elderly people can use their walking sticks to guide their mobile companions or uses where manual input of commands are not possible. He calls it the "Step-On Interface (SOI)." A video is worth a thousand words.....
Dr. Matsumaru (shown left) spent 12 years at Toshiba developing robots before he joined the faculty at Shizuoka University.
Yaskawa Electric - one of the world's largest industrial robot manufacturers - is interested in developing and selling more robots outside of the factory floors. Recently it's MOTOMAN robots were found playing the traditional Japanese drums at a large summer festival in southern Japan (you can read about the drum beating robots on NewScientist.com) but the company has other projects under works.
One is the Robo Porter. I had a chance to see it at Yaskawa's headquarters in Kitakyushu in the end of July and below is a video that I took then.
Yaskawa is just about to start using the Robo Porters inside its own factory where they will carry around the circuit boards that are used to make other robots. But the sophisticated wheels provide easy turns and smooth rides and it should be fit for other mobile robots - such as wheelchairs and airport porters - says Kazuhiko Yokoyama, Manager of the RT Technology Team at Yaskawa's R&D Center.
Another project at Yaskawa is the SmartPal. Yaskawa initially developed this robot to prove that it can manufacture a robot from interchangeable units. Yaskawa currently sells industrial robots as a "system," but it is thinking of starting to make money from selling "units" and "components" as well. This strategy is better for the consumer/service robot market because unlike industrial robots, "each robot will need to be highly customized and one company can't possibly make a product from ground up" according to Yokoyama.
Consumer robot manufacturers will have to buy units to build a product for a ceratin need and that's where Yaskawa would like to do its business. In other words, Yaskawa would like to sell the units that it developed to make SmartPal so that its customers can use it in their products.
Yokoyama (shown below with SmartPal) predicts that his company's unit/component business will eventually exceed its system business.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) created the annual Robot Award to boost the Japanese robotics industry. The winner of the inaugurating year of 2006 was the cleaning robot developed by Fuji Heavy Industries (maker of the Subaru cars). The robot that cleans the floors of high-rise buildings is able to take the elevator on its own to move around multiple floors. It's contribution for opening up a new market for robots and for cutting cost for the building owners were the reasons to be chosen from 151 other robots.
