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The best of CEATEC 2016: virtual tea, printed makeup, too many robots
Panasonic showed off a TV that hides in plain sight, there were gesture controlled origami birds, and a TARDIS-shaped machine that could 3D scan your entire body in four seconds flat. That's the kind of show CEATEC is. There were even more robots, and while some of them might have a future, many may never be seen again. And that's okay. Here's everything we saw, and you can find all the best bits in the video above.
ICYMI: Wetsuits will be modeled on the cutest sea creatures
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: MIT researchers are creating a two-layer wetsuit modeled off of the pelts of sea otters and beavers, who are able to stay warm in chilly water despite not having the layer of blubber that whales and dolphins have. Meanwhile bumblebees are being trained to pull strings to get a sweet reward. The ease with which they've taught each other is surprising scientists, who hadn't known the little guys could be trained. If you're interested in the origami bird that can be controlled with hand motions, that's here. And the video of Blue Origin being tested is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Honda's 3D-printed customizable EV has motorcycle bones
Honda isn't the first company to reveal vehicles with 3D-printed panels, details and more. However, it's certainly one of the biggest, so its efforts warrant a closer look. Fresh off the heels of the Paris Auto Show, Honda showed off its Variable Design platform for micro EVs: petite cars where space -- and weight -- is at a premium. The automaker wants to offer a vehicle with a customizable layout where drivers can choose what they need. That could be lowered entry points at the doors for senior drivers, a hatchback trunk for delivery vehicles or space for a family of three. (Somehow!) Let's take a closer look:
How about a nice hot cup of virtual tea?
Electronics company ALPS tests (and manufactures) all kinds of things. But its virtual cup, made possibly by haptic technology and heat transmission, is the electronics manufacturer at its weird best. The cup, which is the size of a typical tumbler, is able to transmits a material's tensile strength and even the temperature of your beverage of choosing. That is, as long as it's cold water in a plastic cup or hot tea in a mug. As you tilt it, you feel the weight of the cup shift, and hear the water slosh around. As Engadget's Deputy Tea Editor, I can confirm that the effect is... freaky.
Full-body 3D scanning is about to get faster and cheaper
3D scanners come in all shapes and sizes these days, and obviously the bigger you go, the more you have to pay. In the case of full-body scanning, many existing solutions require you to stand still for 12 to 14 seconds which isn't ideal for both the customer and the vendor, plus they tend to take up a large amount of space. Luckily, that won't be the case with a new machine from Japanese startup VRC. Unveiled at CEATEC, the Shun'X -- "shun" meaning "instantaneous" and "x" implying limitless possibilities -- can scan a person in merely four seconds, and its footprint takes up just six square meters of space as opposed to the typical nine to eleven square meters.
Panasonic's smart mirror finds your flaws, prints makeup to fix them
Panasonic has discovered a profitable new business in the last few years: beauty tech products. Facial moisturizing tech, hair dryers and very relaxing eye masks that I may have tested out (multiple times) at my local Japanese tech store. This time, the tech giant pitched its latest beauty concept as an "interactive mirror." Same old story, right? Not quite. It says it could be a makeup-applying "revolution" that scans your face, decides what needs a little cosmetic help and prints a combination pad of foundation and concealer to fix it up, with little to no makeup wasted. It sounds like a nonsensically vague future concept, but Panasonic thinks otherwise, and has the demo to prove it.
Panasonic's new prototype TV can hide in plain sight
Panasonic has shown off a transparent TV before, but the company has since improved the image quality to the extent that the idea of a television built into your furniture's glass panes is not only possible -- it's right here. The OLED screen is made from a fine mesh, embedded into the glass sliding door. While the TV image is visible even with the backlighting on, once it's dimmed the image is clear and bright enough to be almost indistinguishable from existing televisions. (The last model was a bit too dim, and required under-shelf lighting to boost the image.) Turn the TV panel off, however, and it's hard to tell it was ever there to begin with. Want one? Panasonic's spokesperson says the television is likely to stay in development for a while longer: at least three more years.
The weird and the wonderful from Japan's biggest tech show
CEATEC 2015 is trade show that tries to thinly spread a trend across a whole range of exhibitors: traditional electronics giants like Honda, Sharp and Panasonic mix with university research projects, startups, and just outright weird things. This year, however, there wasn't a standout one. The Internet of Things, energy efficient transport and increasingly precise robots were three vague themes, but with flashes of occasional crazy brilliance. You'll find the best discoveries from half a week in Chiba, Japan, right here. And as a sort-of-sayonara to the show, here's a gallery of the freakier sights.
Only in Japan: the robot that's a smartphone that's a robot
RoboHon ("Robot Phone") is the cutest smartphone ever: a (familiar looking) robot frame that fits in your pocket. It can take calls, dance, project photos, display maps and more. It's a 'bot with a smartphone inside. Yes, some will snort at the idea of a phone with a 2-inch touchscreen, but it's certainly an original notion -- unashamedly so. That said, is it innovative? Is there a point to it all? Does it really fit in your pocket? We'll know better when it launches here in Japan early next year. For now, here's a closer look in person, answering at least one of those questions.
OMRON's Family Eye home camera is both cute and powerful
Most home security cameras these days already come with microSD storage, two-way audio, motion detection and night vision, so it's about time someone offers a more powerful package. If you happen to reside in Japan, then you may want to consider OMRON's Kazoku Mesen aka Family Eye. Hardware-wise this is just a cute 720p video camera with all of the aforementioned features, but it's the company's OKAO Vision technology that really sells it: It's able to recognize faces, hand gesture, age, gender, expressions (it can automatically take photos of a baby whenever he or she smiles) and even cats plus dogs. Offices and shops can also take advantage of the Family Eye for customer analysis and head counts. Not bad for a ¥29,800 (about $250) kit, except for one slightly unfortunate flaw: It cannot record video, just still photos, so you'll have to rely on notifications and the app's live stream feature. We still want one, anyway.
Meet the laundry-folding washing machine of our lazy-ass future
Socks are the hardest. For a future washing machine that washes, dries and then folds the results, it's one of the small barriers that remains in that latter stage. But as a research project that started back in 2008, Laundroid is finally getting there. Next year, the collaboration between housing firm Daiwa House, electronics company Panasonic and Seven Dreamers will start offering preorders, the year after that 'beta' machines, then folding machines for big institutions, with event full retail planned the year after that -- we'll be in 2019 by then. (That said, the all-in-one model is still at the in-development stage). There's no price and the presentation we saw added in a bunch of mosaic filtering on top as the shirt gradually got folded so you couldn't see how the thing actually works. But that's okay. We can wait. It's not going to stop us waiting our chore-dodging dreams to come true.
This paper origami bird actually flies
Origami and technology go together pretty well. Lightweight, efficient structures... and animal shapes. But there's nothing more "origami" than the humble paper crane. Now, courtesy of a small, light, power-efficient microcomputer from Rohm (a Japanese company: don't let the name fool you), the crane can fly. Better still, it's remote-controlled and can even keep itself afloat for around five minutes, according to the spokesperson. It's almost the most Japanese thing here at this year's CEATEC. Almost.
'RoboHon' is the tiny robot smartphone you never knew you needed
Watch the teaser video after the break. Skip along then come back to me. Sharp's RoboHon is so damn adorable, I can't look away from this kawaii singularity. This robot smartphone may be cute, but it's also jammed full of skills and features. A projector, articulated animated arms and legs, talkative but in a charming Japanese robot sort of way. You're old, Pepper the robot. There I said it.
Japan Display crammed 8K into a 17-inch LCD
In 2015, we want our displays to be sharper, brighter and even wrapped around the edges of our smartphones (maybe). Now, Japan Display has pushed the limits of screen resolution yet again by announcing a 17.3-inch 8K LCD module capable of running at a smooth frame rate of 120Hz. If you're trying to get your head around how many pixels that involves, JD is way ahead of you: it's 510 pixels per inch. The manufacturer says that the high resolution will offer an element of depth to images, and that it could be ideal for video-editing, medical displays and even as gaming screens. Unfortunately, that's all we know for now, but the LCD will be at CEATEC 2015 with all its millions of pixels on show.
Sayonara, CEATEC 2014: Another curious tech show
Japan's annual CEATEC is often the black sheep of the global tech show circuit. While CES in Vegas throws up new TVs, laptops, tablets and the occasional phone to pore over, and IFA in Germany does the same in the middle of the year, CEATEC doesn't usually offer up many big ole' fashioned product launches. Whether it's due to the nation's gradually recovering economy, or strategic choices of Japanese companies (Sony's not here, to start), the trade show tries to balance major Japanese tech brands alongside carmakers like Honda and Toyota, as well as component manufacturers, universities and tiny startups trying to gain a foothold. It's a generally messier show, but then that's part of the charm: There are always some interesting things to see -- as you'll discover for yourself below. (And you can find the rest of our reports right here.)
Honda's latest robotic stool is fun to ride, still impossible to buy
One of the several reasons for why we love CEATEC is that we get to test ride human transporters there (as well as meeting robots of all sorts). Last year we came across Honda's stool-like UNI-CUB, and this year, the company is back with a new and improved model dubbed UNI-CUB Beta, and it even let attendees ride the vehicles -- while wearing Epson's smart glasses, no less -- around the show floor under staff supervision. It should be noted that the Beta was actually first unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show last November, but that didn't kill our curiosity. Read on for our impression and hands-on video.
The Tempescope shows you tomorrow's weather by physically creating it
Another very cool item hidden within CEATEC, Japan's biggest tech show, was the Tempescope. The team behind it call it "an ambient physical display that visualizes the weather, inside your living room" -- it's an elaborate lit-up box that shows you tomorrow's weather in a very classy, oddly relaxing, way. To work out exact what kind of weather it should summon, the Tempescope pulls hourly forecasts from a wireless connection from a PC (future models could pretty easily pluck similar information from your smartphone), and once the 'scope knows what's happening, it'll try to create those meteorological conditions inside the sealed cuboid you see above. A combination of water and ultrasonics creates the cloudy vapor inside the box, while water can also be gathered at the top, and dripped down to create rain. LED lights at the top attempt offer up an estimation of either thunder or sunshine, depending on what's going down tomorrow.
Toshiba prototype is a simpler, lighter Google Glass rival... with a catch
Nearly every tech company wants in on the wearables game, but they can't all be Google Glass or Apple Watches -- not that they have to be. But hey, here's Toshiba -- and it's got a Toshiba Glass prototype to show off. We'll say this right at the start: this remains a reference product that the company's showing off at CEATEC in Japan this week. And yes, technical specifics (let alone a price) aren't being discussed yet, but the vision for Toshiba's eye-based wearable prototype is a gentle, predictable one. The hardware is the combination of a tiny projector, attached to admittedly normal-looking frames. However, there's actually a special kind of one-sided reflective glass to catch the projection. The projection module itself is kind of bulky, but actually lightweight... which is great, until you realize that this prototype requires a constant wired connection to work.
We just had an out-of-body experience with this robot-Oculus project
It's an unusual experience for a weekday afternoon: I stare up to see myself, staring up. I'm strapped into an Oculus Rift VR headset, which is both controlling (and streaming from) cameras atop a 1.5ft robot roaming around my feet. This robot on wheels is composed of segments that hold a stereo camera, storage, the "brains" and, importantly, a wireless internet connection to stream dual camera feeds to a nearby PC -- as well as receive movement instructions. The effect, courtesy of high-latency motion feedback from the Rift, is that when I turn to the right, or look upwards, the robot does exactly the same thing, with a motorized joint connected to the camera module matching my gaze.
Murata's cheerleader robots move around on balls and do it in J-Pop unison
It's probably the most Japanese thing I've seen in my first year of covering the country for Engadget: Robo-cheerleaders, barreling around in sync like some sort of Japanese girl "idol" group. In total, there are 10 Cheerleader bots (with two standby units), with light-up cheeks, pom-pom arms that look like PlayStation peripherals and glowing eyes. They glow; they lift their arms; they form ensemble shapes; and they are arguably the most adorable, Weeble-esque robots you've ever laid eyes on. Following the bicycling Murata Boy and the unicycling Murata Girl, here's the Murata Cheerleader and her nine sisters. They're about to dance in formation, all while balancing on a ball. Not only because they simply can, but also because this is how their parent company showcases its (often mind-numbing, let's admit it) sensors and components to both businesses and Joe Public alike.
