Archive for the 'Inventors' Category
The Robots of Japan Tech Expo ‘85
An episode of Computer Chronicles (1983-2002) about the Tsukuba Expo 85 has some fantastic segments about mid-80s robotic visions of the future.
At 10:57 We get a good long look at Waseda University’s Wabot 2 playing the organ, with great commentary about robots and society from the late Professor Ichiro Kato.
And at 18:32, there’s a love scene from German designer / futurist Luigi Colani’s Robot Theater. A few years back I saw the robot actors on display at Nagoya’s Robot Museum. Seeing them in motion here just made my morning.
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Of course there are other good clips of the Expo’s mag-lev monorail, France’s proto-web MiniTel, and Sony’s first Jumbo-Tron.Colan
1 commentRogue Toy Inventor Creates Robotic Self-Tooting Horn
Mr. Future’s secret identity revealed!
As part of my ( beloved ) day job, I invent electronic toys for Atomocom. We just had a bang-up great Toy Fair ‘08 showing, and to make a good week even better, New York Magazine just ran a small Toy Fair aftermath/artifact blurb on yours truly.
( Now back to our regularly scheduled future-centric programming. )
No commentsPhotonic Laser Thruster Could Take Us to Mars in a Week
Just not this week. 
Inventor/Professor Young Bae will be demonstrating the first viable photonic laser thruster at the American Institue of Aeoronautics and Astronautics Space Conference next week.
Developed with funding from NASA’s NIAC, the photonic laser thruster (boy that’s fun to say) is tiny, made with off-the-shelf parts, and has the potential to propel spacecraft to speeds greater than 100 km/sec ( 3700 mph ). Zoom.
Link
I Have Heard the Robots Singing Each to Each
While other robotic (and robot-assisted) musical groups have employed everything from robot guitarists to electro-mechanical xylophones, Maywa Denki is the first to use a true robot vocalist.
The music group/concept art/design company Maywa Denki has brought the world some incredible “Nonsense Machines“, music machines, and toys. But their robotic vocalist, shown in this “product demonstration video” along with their robotic “Mecha Folk” quartet, is over the top brilliant.
The robotic vocalist, dubbed “Seamoons,” is a combination of mechanical bellows and a computer controlled rubber vocal chord that’s monitored and modified in real time, sounding something like a tiny electric Yma Sumac.
Links (1,2,3) to the two Maywa Denki product demonstration and a (completely mad) performance video. (via Metafilter) 5 comments
FT Robot: Something in the Way She Moves
Scifi Tech Blog Writes:
Robo-Garage’s resident genius Tomotaka Takahashi demonstrated graceful FT Robot on the runway at New York Japan Society’s Tech Epoch. The slender, diminutive FT, driven by one on-board computer, two gyroscopes, 23 motors, and the power of love, is just over a foot tall.
Takahashi and Kyoto University’s Robo-Garage, known for their work on realistic robot movement and gaits,consulted with professional models to make FT’s movements distinctly feminine, and lifelike. Takahashi believes that half of all robots will be “female” in the near future.
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“This Farmer Grows Robots”
Paul Merton interviews Mr Wu, a farmer who makes brilliant “robots out of rubbish.” Everything from vintage style tin walkers to a man-sized ridable robot rickshaw that talks.
The best part of the segment comes from the inventor’s wife, Mrs Wu. Speaking after one of Mr Wu’s robots recently burned the family home to ground, “Other people’s husbands, they are busy making money, or looking after the wife and children,” she complains. ” The only thing on his mind is making robots.”
Video Link and China Daily Link (via William Gibson’s blog.)
1 comment
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