Tsukuba
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Robot Safety Center opens up in Japan, Crash Test Dummies still an unfortunate name for a band (video)
The fair city of Tsukuba, which (as you know) is located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, has recently become home to the new Robot Safety Center. A collaboration between a number of organizations including Japan's Automobile Research Institute (JARI), the center has areas for testing various robots and exoskeletons for things like obstacle detection, electronic jamming resistance, durability, and more. As well as developing safety standards for the devices, it is hoped that within the next five years it will provide certification services for new robots as they become commercially available. Some eighteen tests have been installed at the facility thus far, and we must say that it looks like fun! See some examples after the break.
TalkTorque robot gets day job as creepy museum guide, TalkTorque 2 is now the future (video)
As if there weren't enough Greys flying around in saucers and conducting strange experiments on us at night, a team at Tsukuba University went ahead and created their own. Two of them, as a matter of fact. It started with TalkTorque, a short, white bot with swoopy arms and head designed to help research in non-verbal communications. That poor guy is old news now, relegated to guide duty at the school's Groupware Lab. TalkTorque 2 has come along with slightly refined looks and a chunky collar containing a trio of motion- and range-sensing cameras to help the thing figure out who it should be talking to. Of course, it still has no mouth, so the "talking" will be in broad arm gestures, which it will surely use to guide you to his ship's examination chamber. There's a video of that communication technique below, along with some dramatized footage of the TalkTorque 2 in action.
Gesture-controlled robot arm enables civilization's most meta high five
This video, criminally, doesn't actually show any high fives, but we're sure the students at the University of Tsukuba have sustained endless LOLs over the past few months, pushing their gesture-driven robot arm system to the limits of human-robot high five interaction. The system itself is relatively simple: it uses two cameras to track a hand's movements, including specific finger gestures, which are then processed and translated into robotic movement in real time. The end result is basically the world's most elaborate claw machine game, as demonstrated above.
Puyocon mouse reacts to being squeezed, thrown, gyrated (video)
The Puyocon isn't about to swoop in and replace your trusty old two-dimensional laser pointing mousie just yet, but we're always suckers for bizarre input peripherals. Demonstrated by Tsukuba University at Siggraph Asia 2009 last month, it is a soft and squeezable ball that offers a quirky new spin on the old airborne controller idea. Differing from the Wii Remote in the fact that it won't break your HDTV (or itself) if it slips out of your hand, the spongy ball operates on the basis of a three-way accelerometer and 14 pressure sensors in order to give detailed multidimensional information to the system it's controlling. That's probably overkill for the humble computer desktop, but there might be hope for the Puyocon becoming a commercial reality through games that make use of all its input points -- after all, if there's room for the Wiiwaa, why not the Puyocon too? See it in action after the break.
Former professor creates vibrating Braille handset
Braille phones in and of themselves aren't all that unique, but a former professor (who just so happens to be completely blind) from Tsukuba University of Technology has crafted a variant that jumps and jives. Dubbed the world's first vibrating Braille cellphone, the device is programmed to emit pulses depending on which key is pressed; more specifically, a pair of terminals attached to the handset "vibrate at a specific rate to create a message." Those currently involved with the project are now toiling to make the keypad-to-vibration converters smaller, but there's no word just yet on whether the technology will be picked up commercially. [Via FarEastGizmos]
Take an actual walk in virtual reality with String Walker
SIGGRAPH has certainly been the home of many virtual reality demonstrations, and this year yet another contraption that (partially) removes us from the world we know will be on display. Similar to the Powered Shoes and Virtusphere seen in years past, the String Walker is a "locomotion interface that uses eight strings actuated by motor-pulley mechanisms mounted on a turntable" in order to let users walk through virtual landscapes. Proprioceptive feedback allows the VR system to translate actual footsteps into the digital world, giving participants a reason to stroll around rather than just twiddling their thumbs. Reportedly, the biggest challenge was mastering the floor, which enables omni-directional walking that simple "treadmill-like" surfaces don't offer and in a simpler fashion than the "complicated" CirculaFloor. Next-generation DDR, here we come.[Via Gizmag]
