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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.
A robot made me (marginally) better at ping pong
We're back for a rematch. The ping-pong robot has had an upgrade or two, and in Rocky-style, your rival is now your trainer. Yep, the newest demo from Omron (a company better know for its healthcare products), aims to help you play it at table tennis. The entire table has been upgraded into a display, showing the predicted path of the ball, and even where the meatsack player should be hitting it.
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.
This sensor knows if you like anime a little too much
At some point in life, you may have wondered: would you prefer dating an anime character instead of an actual human being? If you're unsure, ROHM's here to help. At CEATEC, the component maker paired up with TECHMAC to show off a dating game featuring a "Tokimeki Sensor" -- "tokimeki" is a Japanese word for "palpitation" that's often associated with dating simulators. The player places his or her hand on a board, with the index fingers placed on an optical palpitation sensor on the back. The subject then faces a flirty anime boy or girl on the left screen for about a minute, followed by its human counterpart on the right, and then the game will determine whether you're into 2D romance instead of 3D. We didn't dare to face the truth, because you know, the heart never lies, but our friend Tim Stevens wasn't so sure about this machine's accuracy.
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.
These 8K displays may end up on your next tablet
Most of us have barely touched 4K content, but the keen folks in Japan are already showing off some 8K displays, and we're not just talking about those of conventional TV sizes. At CEATEC, NHK brought along three upcoming 8K panels that may end up on future tablets, laptops and monitors. These include JDI's 17.3-inch LCD that was just announced last week, as well as Ortus' insanely sharp 9.6-inch LCD (that's a whopping 915 dpi!) from May, and Sharp/SEL's 13.3-inch OLED display. Even though the OLED panel was unveiled back in June last year, it's still by far the best 8K display out of the three; it's as if you're looking into another world, thanks to the combination of high contrast, strong vibrancy plus insanely sharp resolution. Alas, there's no launch date for any of these just yet, but a spokesperson from NHK hopes to see these come out before the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which will be broadcast in 8K.
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.
Touchy turns you into an over-friendly, clingy human camera
"Hold my hand for ten seconds and I'll take a picture of you." That's what you get to say to people when you're wearing Touchy. The idea's simple: You put on this camera-shaped helmet, and the shutters will keep you blind until you get help from someone by just touching him or her. As a bonus, if you manage to hold onto your new -- and maybe slightly terrified -- friend for ten seconds, the helmet will then automatically take a photo and display it on the back. This is the work of Hong Kong artist Eric Siu, who created Touchy in 2012 as a way to heal social anxiety, though we can't say we were entirely convinced when Siu approached us at CEATEC. That said, we now have a new idea for our Halloween costume.
'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.
