Japanese Robot and Baseball

Hello, we hope you have had a great week, we know we have.

Here in Japan the national sport is the baseball, they have a very strong league and in fact they won the last Baseball World Classic, which is the major award a nation can obtain in this sport.

So, what happens with a nation leading the world in robotics and baseball lover, yes, Masatoshi Ishikawa has developed a robotic arm that is able to pitch and catch baseball balls as fast as 150 kph, which is itself an impressive feat for a robotic architecture.

Enjoy the video, and remember to comment and send ideas and suggestions.

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Computers Learn to speak watching TV

Computers now a days have been granted with a very high number of communication abilities, like text recognition, or some early form of speech recognition.

Oxford University researchers have created a program that allows a computer to recognize sign language when watching TV, now, itself is already a big task, furthermore they ere able to allow the computer learn the language without external help, then after watching a TV program featuring sign language commentator, the computer will be capable of recognizing as many words as they showed in the program.

This presents a great hop in recognition field, as it may allow deaf and mute people to interact with robots and computer maybe in a more seamless way than we already do.

You can watch a demo in the following video.

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New member in the Laboratory

Last week we had the pleasure of receiving a visitor researcher in the area of mobile robotics from India, his Name is Prabin Padhy, and we wish him a fruitful experience during his 8 months of stay.

More robots from automotive companies

By now, probably all of you are aware of the existence of Honda amazing humanoid robot ASIMO, well Toyota is having its share in these kind of robotics and from time to time have presented us a wide variety of models, being one of the most popular its trumpet and violin playing robot.

Now, we have a video of their latest development, the running robot, the feat itself does not sound impressive at all, yet, wait to see how well the robot behaves, even with external forces pushing it, it has yet to be perfected, but the path is right on tracks.

We leave you with a video of the robot in action.

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Having fun at work

Do you know what happens when a giant claw of 15 tones a Wiimote and a good programming ability are mixed.

Well  Transmin company at Australia just had the answer to that question in they latest development, where they implemented a solution for controlling a giant crane using a Wiimote and some python programming.

Do you have some more applications using the Wiimote, please be sure to share them by sending a mail to this blog.

See you next time

 

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Robots against global Warming

As we all know global Warming is becoming a major trend in all kind of researches in the world.

Lately the NASA associated with Northrop Grumman into releasing a version of the Global Hawk, which is an unmanned flying vehicle into sensing the status in the northern pole so information in current climate changes is delivered efficiently online.

 

“Using these data, scientists would also be able to measure the speed, direction and topographic height of ice caps whose sub-glacial bedrock topography is already mapped – thereby providing critical information that can be used to improve models of glacier mechanics.”

 

So Robotics are in our everyday lives and hopefully some day soon we will be able to interact more than ever with robots.

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Giant Robots

It is no secret in Japan there has always been a particular fascination with robots. This highly resonates in the country research output in the robotic matter, which is the number one in the world.

This said, this fascination extrapolates to the animation, which is by many probably the most recognized way of Japanese culture known in the world.

In the artificial island of Odaiba located in Tokyo bay there is a 1:1 Robot of the Gundam anime to commemorate the 50 anniversary of this series start.

If you happen to be in Japan within the next 2 months be sure to check it, as it is going to Korea in August.

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