Japan Robot Week is the occasionally quirkier, certainly more intimate, biennial alternate to iREX, its gigantic big brother. The focus is on Japanese firms’ service, assistive, and social robotics offerings; to the point: it’s a big-ass building filled with badass robots.
There are million different angles to discuss here, but by far the most interesting idea is a gradual, mutual, acquisitional merger – the pending-yet-not-far-off arrival of homeostasis between biological and mechanical life.
What we have here is the first myoelectrically controlled robotic prosthetic attached directly to human bone. Holy shit.
We’ve been in love with Team Skeletonics’ human-powered exoskeleton for years, and all throughout, it’s pretty much been the same mechanical and aesthetic configuration. But it now looks like they’ve been refining in the background, and might be bringing something new out to play.
When a giant Japanese company that makes robots starts collaborating with a giant Japanese company that makes houses at the same time the Japanese government begins funding public robotics, awesomeness seems likely to follow.
Japan has some unique motivations to make robomobiles, and they’re on it! No, they don’t transform into sentient robotic warriors who’ve mastered interstellar travel yet still suck at compromise (seriously Transformers, you guys are dumb as hell), but the J-cars are cool.
Japan’s going to be running out of people, and apparently a lot of the kids these days just don’t wanna, you know, do it. So, naturally – robots, yo.