Japan Robot Week 2016 went very well. The 3-day event drew 30,000 humans – nearly double the 2014 attendance. Therefrom, here is a handful of superbly mediocre photos of robots and robot stuff.
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.
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.
Japan’s NHK has developed a subtly robotic virtual reality interface (that actually virtualizes the non-real), and Honda has released 100 of it’s subtly robotic assistive devices into Japanese medical institutions; Subtle robotics moves, exciting robotics potential.
THIS WEEK’S DISPATCH: NHK is showing off touchable TV and ultra-res TV cameras that are just bananas, Japan’s got super-duper malaria vaccine (giveth to Africa), and Japan’s hunting rare earth in Malawi (taketh from Africa).
Through the Sci-Fi Nomenclature Committee approved processes of a brain interface known as “ECoG,” the science guys have shown that, even after 7 years without any actual movement, the brain is still sending signals for the body to do so. And these signals can move a robot.