Sep 302016
 
Get Your Ass to Japan Robot Week!

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.

Mar 192016
 
Bionic & Biological: The Ferocious Conundrum of Being 50/50 (FOUR-YEAR FAR FAR FLASHBACKY)

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.

Oct 282013
 
Japanese Exoskeleton Update: Does Team Skeletonics have new gear? (VIDEO)

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.

May 092013
 
Honda's Got Robots, Sekisui's Got Houses, and the Japanese Government has Cash

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.

Apr 132013
 
Japan's Robot Cars: Not Yet Good nor Evil nor FTL Spaceflight-Ready but Still Pretty Cool

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.

Mar 222013
 
Robots for Japan: talk with them, move with them, live with them... All in time.

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.