KeioUniversity
Latest
Self-stabilizing bike stabilizes bikers who can't stabilize themselves
The bicycle -- whether electric, rocket-powered or simply sporting Bluetooth -- is certainly looking a lot better these days, and now researchers at Yokohama's Keio University have devised a way to keep the vehicle upright without the help of a human operator. The otherwise typical bicycle sits on a set of rollers and is equipped with two motors: one moves the rear wheel an average of 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) per second while the other controls the handlebars. A linux controller keeps an eye things via webcam and gyro sensor, steering the vehicle and adjusting its speed as necessary. Currently the bike is only able to stay upright when moving in a straight line, but soon enough we should see a system that can take corners and work in real world situations. Because why should people with an adequate sense of balance have all the fun?
Researchers say "spin Seebeck effect" could lead to new batteries, storage
You know something's a long way from becoming an actual product when we're just talking about the discovery of an "effect," but a team of researchers at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan say that the so-called "spin Seebeck effect" they've discovered could eventually have some pretty big implications for all sorts of devices. According to Science News, the researchers found that by heating one side of a magnetized nickel-iron rod they were able to change the arrangement of the electrons in the material according to their "spins," which is the quantum-physics equivalent of the south-north magnetic axes in bar magnets. One of the big advantages of that, it seems, is that, unlike with electric currents, transferring information by "flipping spins" does not generate heat, which would let "spintronics devices" operate at higher speeds without overheating, and cut down on power consumption in the process.[Via Spintronics-Info, image courtesy Nature]
Skin, it does a robot good
Hang on to your Jimmy hats kids, human skin for robots has just been created in a lab somewhere in Japan, of course. OK, it's not real skin, rather, a 1-cm thick film of elastic silicone covered by a 0.2-mm thick textured layer of firm urethane -- a dermis and epidermis, if you will -- which 10 out of 12 lonely robotics professors swear feels like the real deal. The artificial skin was developed primarily for cosmetics testing in a partnership 'tween Kao Corporation and a research team from Keio University led by Takashi Maeno. Yeah, right, cosmetics. With work already underway to make robots detect their owner's sweat and racing pulse, well, we think it's pretty clear where this is all going, eh?
BiblioRoll, the new digital literary baton
We're not sure that the BiblioRoll exactly meets the definition of kawaii, but it's definitely all sorts of awesome looking, and feels pulled from a 70s sci-fi. The BiblioRoll is a 15cm (about six inches) plastic cylinder that contains three 2-inch LCDs encased in separate sections of the cylinder. Each section can be rotated to display pages of different books, each of which can be linked and referenced together. The good folks from Media Design Okude Laboratory at KEIO University in Japan say that the BiblioRoll won't be complete until 2010, which should give us enough time to save up enough money to actually buy one of these things. Maybe by then we'll also have organized a BiblioRoll throwing contest.[Thanks, Takashi Matsumoto]
