by Mark Ollig
You usually see a column when the
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) takes place in this country, so yours truly
thought it would be interesting to check out another country’s version of it.
The Combined Exhibition of Advanced
Technologies (CEATEC) show took place last week in the Makuhari Messe
convention center, near Tokyo, Japan.
CEATEC is Asia’s largest public
showcase demonstrating new technology.
The first CEATEC took place in 2000,
and featured exhibits displaying digital devices for use in industry, business,
and home.
This year’s CEATEC exhibition theme
was called Smart Innovation – Creating a prosperous lifestyle and society.
More than 600 companies attended the
event; displaying their latest high-tech gadgets and technologies to the
masses.
CEATEC provided visitors access to
these new, cutting-edge products, systems, and software, and allowed them to
directly use and experience how communications, information, and imaging
technologies have converged with each other.
To be sure, there were plenty of
robots to be found, in addition to the many demonstrations.
Some of CEATEC’s Smart Innovation
demonstrations included how laundry machines, air conditioners, security
cameras, and other home appliances could be controlled by using a smartphone or
tablet-like computing devices.
Panasonic demonstrated how washing
machines, cooking devices, blood pressure monitors, and bathroom scales, could
be connected to the Internet, so they could be remotely monitored and
controlled.
Carmaker Toyota demonstrated its new
concept car, called the Smart INSECT (Information Network Social Electric City
Transporter).
The car is painted red and black,
and has dual “gull wing doors” which open high into the air, giving it the
appearance of a winged insect.
This small, electric car (which can
be charged using a standard household outlet) is a single-seat, single-person
vehicle.
The test vehicle has built-in motion
sensors, voice recognition, and something called “behavior prediction software”
which, according to Toyota, will be needed for “the future generation of
communications-linked systems.”
As the driver approaches the vehicle,
motion sensors using facial-recognition technology can greet him with a flash
of the car lights or a verbal “Hello.”
These same intelligent sensors can
detect the driver’s hand reaching for the car door – and automatically open it
for him.
From the driver’s smartphone, one
can adjust the car’s air-conditioning and lock the doors.
This prototype city vehicle has a
top speed of 37 mph.
DOCOMO, is a Japanese company which
provides mobile, data, and multimedia services. They presented several
high-tech exhibits.
One of these exhibits included the
Shabette Robot. Shabette is a small, in-house robot which acts as an
intelligent personal assistant. Shabette talks, recognizes human voices, and is
designed to provide interactive assistance.
Shabette’s no Rosie, but it is one
step closer to the realization of folks having a helpful, futuristic household
robot like the one from the Saturday morning cartoon, “The Jetson’s.”
You can watch a short video clip of
the Shabette Robot at http://bit.ly/UdDZxt.
DOCOMO also presented a concept
communications device that is worn like a pair of eyeglasses.
These high-tech glasses will be used
for hands-free videophone communication.
Images taken by the multiple,
ultra-wide-angle cameras built into the glasses will cause the person wearing
them to feel as if they are right in front of the videophone user they are
talking to.
Another presentation by DOCOMO was
of technology called ibeam. With ibeam, a person reading an electronic book on
a computing tablet-device will be able to turn pages by the use of eye
movements alone.
The eye-tracking technology in ibeam
will automatically turn pages, and scroll web pages by following the individual
user’s eye movements.
You can see a demonstration of ibeam
at http://bit.ly/SynYPT.
I watched a video demonstration
taken at CEATEC of a person wearing a futuristic-looking, upper-body robotic
skeletal aluminum frame having inflatable, rubberized arm “muscles” powered
with pressurized air.
Without pressuring the artificial
muscles in the robotic frame, the demonstrator could hold three sacks of rice
weighing 66 pounds on his outstretched arms.
With the artificial muscles in the
robotic skeletal frame pressurized, the demonstrator was able to easily hold an
additional two sacks of rice, for a total of 110 pounds.
Artificial muscle support was also
being provided to the demonstrator’s back, shoulders, and elbows.
Another person testing the robotic
frame outfit said while his arms felt fine with the extra sacks of rice he was
holding, he could feel the additional stress of the weight in his legs, which
did not have any artificial muscles supporting them.
Weighing almost 20 pounds, this
pneumatically (air powered) robotic skeletal frame appeared to be easily worn
by the demonstrators without restricting their movements.
The Koba Lab from the Tokyo
University of Science provided the artificially-muscled robotic outfit being
demonstrated.
A video of the demonstration can be
seen at http://bit.ly/SDuYag.
