Video Japan Archive

  • Robot + iPod touch = robovie mR2 (video)

    Robot + iPod touch = robovie mR2 (video)

    Posted on March 22, 2010 | No Comments
    Japan’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) has unveiled robovie mR2 [JP], a cute desk robot that stands just 30cm tall and weighs 2kg. The cool thing is that users can place an iPod touch in his chest to control the robot (wirelessly via Wifi or by touching the screen).

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  • Meet Tsutenkaku, a robot that looks like a tower (video)

    Meet Tsutenkaku, a robot that looks like a tower (video)

    Posted on March 16, 2010 | No Comments
    Japan has a lot of different robots so why not develop one that looks like a tower - even if it may make no sense whatsoever? That's what a total of seven Japanese companies thought and built the Tsutenkaku Robotto [JP] (Tsutenkaku roughly translates to "tower that extends to the sky"). And as the name suggests, the robot is pretty tall: 170cm.

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  • Bari Bari: New exploration and rescue robot (video)

    Bari Bari: New exploration and rescue robot (video)

    Posted on December 18, 2009 | No Comments
    Japan is prone to large-scale earthquakes, so the fact that researchers in this country are constantly working on the development of highly specialized rescue robots. And the so-called Bari Bari IV is a particularly clever model, as it can help people who are in danger, for example after a building has been destroyed, by being more cautious than other robots. It's one of the robots developed at the Kitagawa-Tsugoshi Lab at Tokyo Institute of Technology. The Bari Bari solves the problem rescue teams encounter at the scenes after an explosion, accident or natural disaster took place: People buried under rubble.

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  • Itazura Bank: The cutest piggy bank you’ve ever seen (video)

    Itazura Bank: The cutest piggy bank you’ve ever seen (video)

    Posted on December 11, 2009 | No Comments
    Japan is the country of piggy banks. Most of them either cute, weird or both, and the newest model, the Itazura Bank [JP], clearly falls in the first category. This thing is just adorable. Here's how it works: You place a coin on the fish bone-shaped button on the top of the piggy bank, which alarms the small kitty that lives inside the savings box. It meows, opens the lid with its head, reaches out its paw, grabs the coin and moves back into the box with another meow.

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  • Mad Hurricane: Japan’s new mini assault robot destroys stuff (video)

    Mad Hurricane: Japan’s new mini assault robot destroys stuff (video)

    Posted on December 4, 2009 | No Comments
    Japan's robot otaku can soon lay their hands on yet another of those electro-mechanical marvels, but this time the robot isn't cute. No, this new model, made by Tokyo-based robot venture Poseidon, is supposed to be mean for a change. And its name (Mad Hurricane) is pretty bad ass, too. Mad Hurricane can perform a number of motions: walk in four directions, swirl to the right or left, stand up by himself when he's on his back or face and, most importantly, kick and punch in six variations. Powered by a battery, the robot stands 40cm tall and weighs 2.4kg. It's made of aluminum, has six built-in gyro sensors and a total of 20 joints.

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  • Music Card: Credit card-like MP3 player with built-in speaker (video)

    Music Card: Credit card-like MP3 player with built-in speaker (video)

    Posted on November 18, 2009 | No Comments
    Japan-based gadget maker Strapya is offering the so-called Music Card MP3 Player (the link leads to their English store), an MP3 player that houses a speaker and an earphone plug but is still just 5mm (0.20") thin. Sized at 5.4x8.6cm, the player weighs 20g. Strapya says the headphone jack is just 2.5mm and ships fitting earphones with the player itself, but they'll also give buyers an adapter so they can use their 3.5mm headphones as well. You can connect the player to your PC or Mac via USB and store MP3 or WMA files in its 2GB internal memory. If you don't use the built-in speaker, you can listen to music for about 15 hours before the battery needs to be recharged.

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  • Clockman: Japanese alarm clock has its own personality (video)

    Clockman: Japanese alarm clock has its own personality (video)

    Posted on November 16, 2009 | No Comments
    Japan sure has a penchant for weird alarm clocks, as we blogged many times in the past. And Clockman, a new model from major Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy, isn't really normal either. Reasons: It looks creepy, it can speak, its eyes and mouth can move and Takara Tomy says it even has a personality and "blood type" (seriously).

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  • The iida Polaris is a cool mix between robot and phone (video)

    The iida Polaris is a cool mix between robot and phone (video)

    Posted on September 9, 2009 | No Comments
    Japan is the nation of robots. Everybody knows that. It's also the nation of cell phones. So why not mix robots and cell phones? That's what the country's second biggest mobile phone provider KDDI au thought and today presents the iida Polaris, a robotic cell phone [link in English], for the first time (click here for my iida concept photo report from April).

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  • Video: Japan gets a ramen noodle robot

    Video: Japan gets a ramen noodle robot

    Posted on July 6, 2009 | No Comments
    Japan is known as the country of robots, and lately, robot engineers in this country seems to be obsessed with the idea of replacing human cooks and chefs. Following inventions like the sushi or pancake-making robot, it's now time to replace ramen cooks (ramen is a famous Japanese noodle dish). The coolest thing about the ramen robot that's currently working in a restaurant in Yamanashi prefecture (west of Tokyo) is that it's made by the owner of that place. Yoshihira Uchida (who studied electronics in university) says he invested five years and $200,000 in the robot.

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