The folks over at Solid Alliance are at it again with wild and wacky (and generally useless) USB devices, and one of their latests offerings is a dancing robot.

Simply plug it into your computer’s USB port, and it will dance around your desk whenever you computer produces any type of sound, be it music or ever the simply beeps emitted by you computer to alert you to various events.

Guaranteed to get old really quick!

Price: 2,980 yen

Via The Raw Feed

Check out this 30 cm tall basswood Gundam model from Bandai.

Each component is hand carved by a craftsman to fine detail, so production is limited and no two are exactly the same.

Price: 57,400 yen

More information (Japanese)

Here is a short video a MOTOMAN, a Yaskawa Electric Corporation robot that has been programmed to play taiko drums.

Via Pink Tentacle

What do you get when you combine a robot and a chair? The Hubo FX-1 chairbot, of course, says Gizmodo’s Adam Frucci.

Although he regards it as his favorite robot design yet, this giant chair with legs could be one of the more misguided innovations of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology–after all, it’s a walking chair robot?

Although future applications are said to include carrying old and disabled persons and moving heavy loads, we know what they really have in mind. Military is naturally also one of its future applications. New Launches speculates that “Maybe in a decade or so it will be running on fuel cells with a soldier mounted on firing rpg’s and chain guns.”

Deadly walking chairs should really liven up the otherwise mirthless DMZ. Here are the details of the innovation from New Launches:

It is basically a chair with legs and can carry a human weighing up to 100 kgs. The person sitting can control the robot easily using the built in joystick. Each ankle has a 3-axis force/torque sensor which measures the normal force and 2 moments. Each foot has an inclination sensor which measures the angle of the slope. Also, the rate gyro and the inclination sensor of the body allow the device to stabilize itself. HUBO FX-1 is two meters in height, and weighs 150 kg. It requires external power but in the long term KAIST aims to make it battery powered.

There is also video of the Hubo FX-1 in action (carrying around a seated but unarmed passenger) on the Gizmodo site.

Did you think yesterday’s CB2 Child-Robot was about as bad as it could get? Maybe not! Lee in Tokyo Times says “Whether it is something to do with the weather or some bizarre robot-related rule isn’t clear, but June in Japan would appear to be the month for revealing freakish yet fascinating robots.”

As only days after the Japan Science and Technology Agency unveiled its utterly unsettling child-like CB2, Meiji University’s Robot and Science Institute has come out with Kansei (meaning sensibility), a deranged looking device that can depict feelings.

Kansei is capable of making up to 36 kinds of facial expressions and can react to words typed into its software. The emotions database contains over 500,000 words and elicits responses from the robot covering the full range from pleasure to displeasure. Kansei obviously regards the concept of “bomb” as unpleasant and displeasing. That’s sensible, but still just another step into the uncanny valley…

Lee adds that “An undoubted advancement that unfortunately has been somewhat overshadowed by Kansei’s alarming likeness to the well known animated character Wallace. Despite being shrugged off by its creators as nothing but a mere coincidence, the robot’s rapturous response to the word ‘cheese’ has only made matters worse.”

It’s alive! Sort of… By all accounts, the Japanese Science and Technology Agency has managed to produce possibly the most disturbing machine ever built–”the most perfectly awful example of the uncanny valley (say, for a horror movie or something).”

According to Engadget, The 33 kilogram CB2 (Child-Robot with Biometric Body) is literally beyond words in its freakiness, not only in its nailing of the uncanny valley, but in its description.

It emulates “the physical ability of a 1- or 2-year-old toddler, can turn over and stand up with assistance,” has 51 compressed air-powered actuators, and has 200 tactile sensors in its skin.

Engadget’s Conrad Quilty-Harper comments: “It sends so many shivers up our spine to think of the CB2’s lifeless putty coating as ’skin’ that it’s a wonder we’re even able to continue typing.”

Although Japan’s birth rate is low and declining, Tokyo Times does not think CB2 is any kind of potential solution: “unlike the real thing, CB2 is neither comical nor cute – far from it in fact.”

The sources have additional pictures as well as a video of “the horrifying little thing writhing about on the floor.” I guess nobody seems to like the poor new humanoid robot very much.

I find it rather kawaii though (sort of) and can hardly wait to get old so I can have one take care of me in the nursing home! That’s assuming that I’m in worse shape than a 1- or 2-year-old toddler who can’t stand or turn over without assistance (very likely). [Source: EBT]

[This just in... Boing Boing does not appear to like the infant automaton much either. It claims " I've seen photos of the creepy Japanese robot programmed to act like a baby, but here are two videos guaranteed to give your the wubbies. It responds to a pinch on its clay colored thigh or cheek by rolling its eyes, flailing its limbs, and honking like a sick duck." Boing Boing also links to some rather unsettling video.]

Japan seems to have produced a lot of similar items to this–but what do you expect from a society so advanced that everyone expects that a robot will take care of them when they grow old? The Robotech Thruster Sex Machine is the latest appliance on the scene and claims to be one of the most advanced.

Although it’s not exactly clear from the picture how it actually works, kanojotoys.com, one source that may be a distributor (in case any Japundit readers are interested) says it’s so powerful that you have to bolt it down with vice grips! How appropriate. This is what the Gizmodo blog has to say about it:

The thruster attaches to a table or other solid surface and has a “Highspeed piston,” “Powerful movement” and a “High quality stabilizer”. It’s essentially a masturbation machine you control with that hand lever, which varies speed and intensity depending on how you like it. Kanjo Toys claims that it’s fantastic because you don’t have to buy new “onacups” to put in it, which we’re guessing means you’re going to have to wash this when you’re done. No word on whether it’s dishwasher safe.

Gundam freaks around the globe will be happy to know that the Fuji-Q Highland Amusement Park in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi, Japan, is building a GUNDAM CRISIS attraction that will be a 1:1 full scale rendition of a Gundam hanger.

GUNDAM CRISIS is scheduled to open in July.

Via Engadget

Check out this Mobile Suit Gundam figure made of pure platinum.

The five-inch tall three-pound figure was created in a collaboration between Bandai and Tokyo jeweler Ginza Tanaka, and has 89 separatte parts.

Estimated value: 30 million yen.

Via Pink Tentacle.

Mospeng-kun is a tissue-dispensing robot created by InterRobot. Friendly and practical, it embodies all the positive qualities that robots should possess.

This is in stark contract to the dangerous and probably evil Terminator or Korean border death merchant kind of robots.

When Mospeng-kun detects a person nearby, it utters a high-pitched onegai shimasu and offers up a pack of tissues. When the tissues are taken from the robot’s hand, it thanks the customer with an arigato gozaimashita and grabs another tissue pack from the cartridge for the next person. Mospeng-kun looks to be a cheerful worker, constantly maintaining a smile on its face monitor. [Pink Tentacle]

These useful robots rent starting at 100,000 Yen ($835) for five days, although seems like it still has to be perfected a bit to work a little faster. So human!

Dormant? The Gizmodo post seems to be quite worried about these autonoma picking up the many deceased elderly plus — like Monty Python says — the “But, I’m not (quite) dead yet!”

However, closer inspection of the source reveals that this is a Fire Department rescue robot designed to pluck dead or almost dead victims from burning buildings etc. Japan may have a rapidly graying population — but most of them aren’t (quite) dead yet.

Still, how many countries have had such machines for 13 years now and who knows what other purposes they may have in mind for them?

Among the robots Japan’s been making to help their elderly population, this body remover is probably the scariest. Sure, the Gundam maid robot looks mean when serving you tea, but does it remove dead bodies? We don’t think so. And seriously, is their population really dying at such a rate that Japan needs robots to clear dead bodies? And do they need them to pick up dormant bodies too?! Imagine the looks on those vagrants faces when they realize they’re being shoved into a dark box with the recently and soon-to-be deceased.

It was just the other day here on JAPUDIT that we had a story about a Japanese robot that serves tea.

Well, it didn’t talk long for a little Yankee ingenuity to kick in and come up with a robotic innovation that addresses one of the most pressing questions that has plagued mankind since the beginning of time. . . What if instead of me going to get the beer, the beer came to me?

United States inventor John Cornwell has created a fridge that will throw you a cold beer on request. The remote-control operated fridge can feed a beer into an adjustable aim catapult that is capable of throwing a can up to 10 feet.

The fridge has a 10-can magazine and can hold a further 14 reserve cans. “I thought, ‘What if instead of me going to get the beer, the beer came to me?’” John said.

“About three months later I have a fully automated, remote-controlled, catapulting, beer-launching mini-fridge,” he continued, “There is a slight danger of being hit in the head with a flying can but this danger decreases the more you use it.”

Thanks to tlxtftrf for the YouTube link!

Here is at least one Japanese gadget (tool?) that seems practical and is not either totally weird or Hello Kitty-branded. Gizmodo reports on a new minibot that performs surgery from the inside out. While previous bots designed for your insides could only take pictures, this is apparently the first to actually be proactive once inside.

An aside. My friend Frank had to have a colonoscopy (sadly, as a mere precaution or as a result of one of those false positives) and they somehow forgot to administer the anesthetic so that he finally asked if it was supposed to be that painful. Well, it isn’t–just “uncomfortable.” Only happens once in a million times though (but that’s enough…)

However, that isn’t the point. He read somewhere that the colon is actually 60 feet long or something and all coiled up, so he wondered why the instrument is only about three feet long? The doctor explained that they don’t have to look at the whole thing–if anything’s wrong it’s obvious from just one part. Naturally, I volunteered to phone the doctor to ask if he could have the 60-foot one next time–just to be on the safe side.

But, if you do need something looked at or done, I guess it’s better if they use something like this rather than having Dr Butcher cut you up to get inside? As Gizmodo comments:

Boy, this sounds pleasant. Researchers in Japan have developed a minibot that enters your body via an incision. It’s then controlled from the outside while it performs surgery on you. It has forceps to take tissue samples, can deliver medicine, and take pictures. So what do you think? Would you rather have a doc slicing and dicing from the outside in, or would you be OK having a tiny robot swimming around your insides doing all the work instead? I can’t really imagine the feeling of having a robot inside me, but I guess in the long run it would be better to have the most minimally invasive surgery possible.

Gizmodo finds this Japanese snow-clearing robot totally “delightful.” In fact, they can hardly contain their enthusiasm for what is admittedly a nice piece of work. Now all that’s needed is some snow instead of premature cherry blossoms?

Yuki-taro is an autonomous snowplow robot that is loaded with GPS and a couple of video cameras to make its way around. It doesn’t just push snow around, oh no. It eats snow, turns it into compressed blocks, then poops them out so they can be used later for alternate sources of cooling and refrigeration. Seriously, how awesome is Japan? If it’s possible to have a crush on a country, I’ve got one. Be my valentine, Japan.

Gizmodo reported that there is a company in Japan that can (and does) still know how to make karakuri dolls–which are ancient little robots from Edo made out of wood and porcelain with no metal screws or anything.

There’s a direct if invisible line connecting these gizmos and the likes of Actroid DR2. An updated version of the “Tea Serving Doll,” Gizmodo was mainly fascinated by the possibility of the dolls serving sake–however, this is very interesting news!

Karakuri ningyo are mechanized puppets or automata from Japan that were built during Edo period (1603 to 1867). They’re always some kind of footnote in the computer course, like the Jacquard loom and El Ajedrecista, but who would have thought someone could still make them? To quote the company’s website:

Karakuri dolls were introduced in the oldest manuscript of mechanical engineering in Japan, which was called Karakuri-zui. Setting the tea cup on the tray makes the doll move, and it stops when the tea cup is removed. If the cup is replaced, the doll swivels around and returns to its original position. Karakuri dolls were the first automata in Japan. Their movements are caused by the power of springs, mercury and sand. You can build them and take them apart easily without ever using metallic screws or nails. Karakuri dolls are a representative of the highest technology in the Edo period. It was difficult to pass the tradition down from generation to generation, because their production required not only the knowledge, but also a high level of craftsmanship. It is called a treasure trove since few original designs from those days still exist, and complete ones are even more rare.

The whole Web site is kind of fascinating and they make an entire range of these automata. The only downside is that the karakuri dolls are made to order, taking 20-40 days, and cost 1,050,000 Yen ($8,722) each. So probably the customers are mainly restricted to rich people and museums but it’s certainly good to hear that the karakuri dolls are alive and well. Well, not “alive” but sort of alive.

Welcome to the Year of the Boar and who knows what else rapidly approaching down the line? Engadget reports that stagebot EveR-2 Muse has finally recovered from stage fright (you may recall that her scheduled appearance not long ago at RoboWorld 2006 in Seoul was canceled at short notice) and now seems to be working fine. As you can see from the remarkable pictures above.

The robot designed by the KITEC, seemingly to test the limits of the uncanny valley theory, is made up of 60 joints around the face, neck, and lower body. With EveR-3 and 4 only a couple of years away, a next-gen girl band might not be too far off.

Testing the limits of the uncanny valley theory for sure. The new versions are expected to walk, sing, dance and have “substantially improved intelligence” - the whole package is expected to be ready by the end of the decade.

Via eBizTutors

Exceptional Japanese robots were honoured at a government-sponsored robotics award ceremony earlier this week. The Robot Award was set up earlier this year by the Japanese government to promote research and development in the robotics industry. Ten robots won prizes out of a total of 152 entries from across Japan.

In the service robots category, winners included the My Spoon feeding robot, which helps older or disabled people eat, and Paro, the furry seal fitted with sensors beneath its fur and whiskers that let it respond to petting by opening and closing its eyes and moving its flippers. More than 800 of the seal robots are already used for therapy in Japanese nursing homes and by autistic and handicapped children.

In the industrial robots category winners included an enormous vacuum-cleaner-on-wheels designed by Fuji Heavy Industries that uses elevators to travel unaided between floors, and the Motoman factory worker robot by Yaskawa Electric, which emulates human hand movements.

Robots are seen in Japan as one way to deal with a rapidly aging population and combat an impending labor shortage. The country’s population of 127 million is expected to plunge 30% by 2055, with those aged 65 or older making up 40% of that figure, according to government forecasts released earlier this week. Amid a general reluctance to accept more foreign laborers, robots are seen as a way to make up the shortfall either directly or by helping older people work longer. Robots could also help care for the country’s growing elderly population, analysts say.

Via CBC News

While not Japanese, David Hanson is a leading light in bio-inspired robots. Hanson Robotics “seeks to endow robots with aesthetic expressivity using biomimetic structures, innovative design principles, and recent breakthroughs in elastomer material sciences. We are also working to imbue these robots with several forms of interactive intelligence, including human-form and facial-expression recognition, and natural language interaction. We anticipate that the integration of constituent AI and human emulation technologies, and humanistic aesthetics will yield the most effective, beautiful, and humane bio-inspired robots.”

What all that all boils down to, is that some of these guys seem to be quite capable of doing things we would rather they didn’t. Can you spell “Frankenstein?” I know that’s a very North American attitude to have but I’m not sure that I would trust some of these machines any further than I could throw a ventroloquist dummy.

In Japan, Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Geminoid HI-1, created out of frustration with robots like Asimo, Saya and Actroid, also just happens to look exactly like him. China’s Zou Renti recently showed his own twin at the 2006 China Robot Expo in Beijing. There’s more about those two in the source.

But every robotics professor in Asia who’s anybody seems to be doing it too. The Actroids and EveRs are one thing, but couldn’t they make them look like somebody else instead of themselves, maybe Astroboy or something? One plus–most of these are currently nailed to the floor, which I regard as a very good thing but the engineers probably figure is just something to be improved in the next version.

Getting back to Hanson, you see in the series above he has an ex-girlfriend who looks something like him (fair enough–nothing too uncanny about that) but the lump of humanoid technology he made looks far too much like her. And if you take a look at the video of the talking head, it’s decidedly creepy in action. Very creepy. Even more creepy because he hasn’t even bothered to finish the rest of her yet.

Some other blogs like Engadget have darkly hinted at Terminator-like “evil android twins” and “building their own robot clone minions to carry out their evil bidding.” That’s probably an exaggeration (?) However, if you doubted before that there may be an Uncanny Valley to step into, we could be arriving there pretty soon. But don’t despair–the engineers just do some more work and then we step out the other side of the Valley with very nice non-uncanny robots that probably look like seal pups to take care of us in the nursing home when we’re old! Right?

Via eBizTutors

This isn’t news but I only ran across it lately and it seems to explain a lot about the point we are at right now. Japanese tend to think of robots as friendly helpful Astroboys while North Americans can see only Frankensteins and Terminators (and they might have a point since the world domination has already started by taking over the California Governator’s office).

The Uncanny Valley is a hypothesis about robotics introduced by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 concerning the emotional response of humans to robots and other non-human entities. According to Wikipedia, which has a pretty good article on this, the hypothesis states that:

As a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes strongly repulsive. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being’s, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-human empathy levels. This gap of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a “barely-human” and “fully human” entity is called the Uncanny Valley.

Dr. Mori’s original graph above shows better how it works. Although some disagreement exists, there seems to be a degree truth to this. Everyone knows that talking animal toys are cute but haunted ventriloquist dummies are creepy. There does seem to be a line and humanoid robots such as the Actroid series are right at the point of crossing it just about now? Or are they? They seem fine so far…

At the very least, I had to look up what ”bunraku puppets” are. You all probably know this already, but seems this is one of the three major classical theaters of Japan, along with kabuki and noh drama — a sophisticated puppet theater written and performed for adult audiences reaching its peak in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The puppets are one-half to full life-size. They’re a bit creepy but nowheres as creepy as Chuckie or a zombie.

Via eBizTutors