Next time you're tempted to flip someone off, these robotic rings might help you get the message across.
The prototype rings consist of motorized eyes and a mouth. Developers from Japan's Keio University showed them off at Interaction 2012 last month in Tokyo, along with a whack of other nutty notions like cyborg houseplants.
The idea is to promote wearable robots and expand the natural expressive abilities of hands. … Read more
Mad scientists at Keio University's Inami Lab in Yokohama, Japan, are set to unleash cyborg houseplants on the world.
Shown off at the recent Interaction 2012 in Tokyo, the "interactive plants" can move their branches in response to people moving around them.
As seen in the video below, they've been rigged with motion sensors, microphones, actuators, and wires, which make their leaves sway when someone approaches. The mechanism is hardly visible, making it seem like the plants are trying to give you a high-five out of their own free will. … Read more
Nikkei Business Daily was first to report on the joint venture.
The companies announced plans to form Japan Display last year. Under the terms of the merger, Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi have combined their small and medium-sized touchscreen LCD operations into the new corporation, and each own 10 percent of the firm. INCJ owns the remaining 70 percent.
Japan Display … Read more
If you thought military robots were only fighting wars overseas, think again. iRobot's war-bots are now working at a nuclear plant right here on home soil.
The company's Warrior and PackBot military robots are carrying out inspections and other duties at a nuclear power plant in South Carolina, iRobot announced today.
Last fall, operator Progress Energy purchased one Warrior 710 and two PackBot 510 units for its Robinson Nuclear Plant near Hartsville. It marks the first time iRobot's machines are being used at a domestic nuclear plant. … Read more
Apple is the top brand in Japanese consumers' minds, according to the results of an annual survey that was published today.
Japan's Nikkei business daily released the results of its 2011 survey on brands, and Apple came out on top. Trailing it was Google, which was last year's leader, as well as other tech brands like YouTube and Panasonic. On last year's list, Apple came in 11th.
The online survey, which was done by Nikkei's consulting business, polled around 52,000 people 18 and older, and ran during the last two months of 2011. Besides consumers, … Read more
If you want to get more natural with your pics, Japanese researchers are working on a gesture-based mini camera that lets your hands frame the shot.
The group at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) in Gifu Prefecture recently showed off something they call the Ubi-Camera, a play on "ubiquitous" and "yubi" ("finger" in Japanese).
As the vid shows below, the simple prototype attaches to your index finger while your other fingers form a viewfinder around it. Push a button with your thumb to snap the shot.
Instead of a zoom … Read more
I tend to believe everything I read on the Web.
So I was moved to reverent silence when Reuters today informed me that Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was "star-struck" on meeting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
It may well be that the mere presence of the world's most famous nerd -- bar those chaps in "The Big Bang Theory" -- created such a commotion in Noda's being that his heart was all a-flutter.
It may also be that something was lost in translation.
As Reuters describes it, Noda said to Zuckerberg: "It's … Read more
A Japanese man discovered that if he typed his name into Google search, more than 10,000 different suggestions popped up in the autocomplete feature allegedly relating his name to criminal acts. After Google reportedly refused his request to delete some of these words, the man decided to seek a court injunction against the Web giant in Japan.
The Tokyo District Court approved his petition last week, which demanded Google remove certain terms from autocomplete, according to a Kyodo News story published on the Japan Times Web site.
Apparently, the man (whose name was not made public) figured out the … Read more
Japanese researchers led by Masaharu Komori, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Kyoto University, recently demoed the Permoveh, or Personal Mobility Vehicle, as a prototype next-generation wheelchair.
The Permoveh has four wheels of the same size, and each wheel contains 32 rollers that can rotate in a perpendicular direction to the rim. As the vid below shows, the vehicle can move in any direction when the user operates a hand-held control.
When the user wants to travel forward or back, the wheels alone move; when going sideways, the rollers move. When traveling diagonally, both wheels and rollers move. … Read more
Should you trust that official-sounding guy on the phone trying to talk you into transferring cash from your account to his? Well, we're going to go out on a limb here and say no, but in case that's not so obvious, new voice analysis technology out of Japan promises to help spot the scammers for you.
Nagoya University and Fujitsu have created software they say can automatically identify situations in which one party might "overtrust" the other. It does so by detecting changes in voice pitch and volume level that can occur under psychological duress.
By combining this technology with keywords such as "indebtedness" or "compensation" that are characteristic to a specific type of remittance-soliciting phone-phishing scam called furikomesagi, the researchers have developed a setup now being tested in collaboration with the National Police Agency of Japan and the Bank of Nagoya. … Read more
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