Japan develops “Aliens” Robot!
Some movies can inspire people to create amazing things…Take for example the movie Aliens. A jaapenese engineer team created a mechanical arm, inspired from that movie…with interesting results.
Japanese engineers have taken us one step closer to the robot revolution by developing a machine inspired by the movie Aliens. The Dual-Arm Power Amplification Robot by Activelink gives users superhuman strength and resembles the hydraulic exoskeleton worn by Sigourney Weaver in the climactic scene of the sci-fi classic.
The robot is being developed for disaster relief situations and can lift more than 200 pounds. However it weighs more than 500 lbs, making it heavy enough to crush the average human without support.
Chief engineer Go Shirogauchi told news.com.au his team was currently working on a way to make the arms lighter for standalone use.
“The main material used is aluminium alloy,” Mr Shirogauchi said.
“Though aluminium itself is a light material compared to iron, in order to make the body lighter we are making some parts of the arms and legs hollow.”
Mr Shirogauchi said the first design priority was to make sure the operator was safe.
“The most important challenge is not to injure the operator with the amplified power,” he said.
“For that challenge, a delicate control and a mechanics design which does not put too much force onto a human in the worst situation is required.”
The robot, dubbed the “Power Loader” after its Hollywood counterpart, uses 18 electromagnetic motors with direct force feedback that allow the human operator to control its behavior.
“Most robot researchers think that robots should move as automatically as possible with very little human instruction,” Mr Shirogauchi said.
“What we are developing is a robot which moves only when an instruction is given from a human and moves exactly according to that instruction.”
The robot’s primary purpose is construction and comes with interchangeable parts to adapt to any situation.
“Our intention is not to develop a small power shovel, but to create a common platform which can be applied to many areas other than the construction sites,” Mr Shirogauchi said.
“It’s like the body of a truck. A truck can be converted to a dumper truck, a cement mixer car, a crane car, a fire engine, a bus or something else by replacing the carrier.”
Mr Shirogauchi said Activelink had no plans for the robot to be modified for combat, but people had expressed interest in its use in disaster relief and warehouses. The arms are expected to cost $329,000 when the robot becomes fully operational. Activelink hope to finish work on it by 2015.
Activelink is owned by Panasonic and financed by the consumer technology company’s Spin-Up Fund. The fund is designed to support employee projects.
Source: Fox News / Official website
I am sure there are many other things that will come from movies…Hope to see them someday, soon.
Japan’s Squeezy Interaction!
In a possible near future, the following technology will be available for many purposes…Rubber will become interactive very soon!
A Japanese team—leaded by Hideki Koike at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo—to develop a touch display that uses rubber to allow you to actually touch real three-dimensional objects
The system uses transparent rubber, an overhead camera, and an LCD panel that emits polarized light. The camera detects the diffraction of light as it passes through the three-dimensional transparent rubber, interpreting your moves and the force you apply to its surface. According to Koike, you can apply this for many things. One example: A three-dimensional model of the brain for surgeons to practice on.
There’s only one disadvantage: The overhead camera. The problem is that the user’s hand can get in the way sometimes, which will give erroneous results. They are planning to embed the camera inside the LCD.
For more details, visit the source at New Scientist via Gizmodo
Another example that can be applied with this technology?…I will leave it to your wildest imagination… 
Japan Theaters fighting Piracy…with Light!?
Movie theaters in Japan will prepare a new technology to prevent piracy, this time with IR light!
A new method for preventing pirates from recording films at movie theaters was unveiled by the National Institute of Informatics on Thursday.
The institute, in co-operation with Sharp, has developed a technique to render any recording unwatchable by flashing pulses of infra-red (IR) light from behind the cinema screen. The pulses pass through tiny holes in the screen originally designed to allow through sound, and cause interference to any video cameras held by members of the audience. The IR light, while invisible to human eyes, is also impossible to filter out without rendering the recording too blurry to watch. The team says best results are achieved at a speed of 10 pulses per second.
The technique was developed by a team led by Associate Professor Isao Echizen, who tested the effects of various wavelengths of invisible light on video cameras.
“It’s a cheap, easy to install and effective method of prevention. We’re looking at widespread implementation in two to three years,” said Echizen.
Films screened at cinemas are already digitally watermarked to prevent them from being copied digitally, but there has been no way of reliably stopping pirates from recording films using video cameras.
The damage caused by bootleg film recordings is estimated at around 3 billion dollars a year, according to the American Film Institute, compounded by advances in camera technology resulting in better quality recordings, and the spread of video camera-equipped cell phones and Internet video sharing sites.
Source: Mainichi / Image Source
Well, lets see what technology the “pirates” can use now against this.
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