Kibo a mini companion and communications robot to arrive to the ISS in summer 2013.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Kibo a mini companion and communications robot to arrive to the ISS in summer 2013.

Tomotaka Takahashi's concept sketch of the robot         

A humanoid robot that will be serving as a companion and communications device to Japanese astronauts living in the Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo” on the International Space Station is expected to be completed by February next year. This was the announcement made by Dentsu, Inc. who is part of the joint effort to make the robot.

 The design and specifications are subject to change.

 The coloring, speech and voices of the two robots (one in space and one on Earth) may differ slightly.

The KIBO ROBOT PROJECT, whose aim is to create a humanoid communication robot that will be a companion for the Japanese astronauts who will be living in the Kibo Experiment Module, was jointly submitted by Dentsu, RCAST and ROBO GARAGE in response to the call last year from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (President: Keiji Tachikawa) for a feasibility study proposal on the theme of solving social issues in the experiment module. The proposal was accepted, and the project team has been working for more than a year on developing a robot that can communicate with the astronauts via autonomous actions and remote operations. The robot will also transmit information from the Kibo module to Earth. In winter 2013 the robot will come face-to-face with Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station, and will take part in the world's first conversation experiment held between a person and a robot in outer space. A second robot with the same specifications will be built to serve as a backup and for demonstration purposes on Earth.

Together with leading engineering companies in Japan, RCAST and ROBO GARAGE have been working on the development of the robot hardware, while Dentsu has been involved in the creation of the conversation content. Toyota Motor Corporation (President: Akio Toyoda; hereinafter "Toyota"), a new addition to the project team, is responsible for the voice recognition and natural language processing functions that comprise the robot's intelligence. Through its participation in this project, Toyota will gather data and collate the accumulated technology that is instrumental to interactive services as well as the development of the "Toyota Partner Robot" that can coexist with people.

The project collaborators hope that the project's activities will disseminate Japan's technological strengths to the international community, and make a contribution to the development of industry and science education.

Dentsu via Gizmag

Press Release:

Humanoid Communication Robot Will Leave Japan

for the International Space Station in Summer 2013

Dentsu Inc. (Tokyo) President & CEO: Tadashi Ishii; Head Office: Tokyo; Capital: 58,967.1 million yen announced today that the humanoid communication robot being developed under the KIBO ROBOT PROJECT, a joint research project being carried out in collaboration with the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo (Director: Dr. Yoshiaki Nakano; hereinafter “RCAST”) and ROBO GARAGE Co., Ltd. (CEO: Tomotaka Takahashi; hereinafter “ROBO GARAGE”), is expected to be completed in February 2013. In the summer of the same year, it will be sent to the Japanese Experiment Module “Kibo” in the International Space Station.

The KIBO ROBOT PROJECT, whose aim is to create a humanoid communication robot that will be a companion for the Japanese astronauts who will be living in the Kibo Experiment Module, was jointly submitted by Dentsu, RCAST and ROBO GARAGE in response to the call last year from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (President: Keiji Tachikawa) for a feasibility study proposal on the theme of solving social issues in the experiment module. The proposal was accepted, and the project team has been working for more than a year on developing a robot that can communicate with the astronauts via autonomous actions and remote operations. The robot will also transmit information from the Kibo module to Earth.

In winter 2013 the robot will come face-to-face with Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station, and will take part in the world’s first conversation experiment held between a person and a robot in outer space. A second robot with the same specifications will be built to serve as a backup and for demonstration purposes on Earth.

Together with leading engineering companies in Japan, RCAST and ROBO GARAGE have been working on the development of the robot hardware, while Dentsu has been involved in the creation of the conversation content. Toyota Motor Corporation (President: Akio Toyoda; hereinafter “Toyota”), a new addition to the project team, is responsible for the voice recognition and natural language processing functions that comprise the robot’s intelligence. Through its participation in this project, Toyota will gather data and collate the accumulated technology that is instrumental to interactive services as well as the development of the “Toyota Partner Robot” that can coexist with people.

The project collaborators hope that the project’s activities will disseminate Japan’s technological strengths to the international community, and make a contribution to the development of industry and science education.

Project Team Members:

Dentsu Inc.

Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo

ROBO GARAGE Co., Ltd.

Toyota Motor Corporation

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (cooperation)

Technical Collaboration

Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation

Vstone Co., Ltd.

crossEffect, Inc.

YUKAI Engineering

Futaba Corporation

HOYA Service Corporation

#####

Contact: Shusaku Kannan

Senior Manager

Corporate Communications Division

Telephone: (813) 6216-8042

E-mail: s.kannan@dentsu.co.jp

Meet Baxter: A Robot with common sense.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Meet Baxter: A Robot with common sense.

Meet Baxter, a revolutionary new category of Robot from Rethink Robotics that is capable of applying common sense behavior to manufacturing environments. Affordably priced, versatile and safe enough to work shoulder-to-shoulder with people, Baxter robots redefine how small, mid-size and large domestic manufacturers use automation to compete with manufacturers in low-cost regions of the world.

“We roll up to a factory, and 45 minutes after we arrive, 
                                            the robot is on the floor doing useful work.”
                                                                  —Rodney Brooks, Rethink Robotics.

Target segment

The target segment for Baxter are small-scale manufacturers, of which there are 300,000 in the U.S., Brooks said.

“We are trying to put robots into places that would normally have robots, so we’re aiming after small customers,” he said. “But it turns out large companies are coming to us — they’ve heard rumors and shown up.”

The introduction of the new robot comes as labor costs in China continue to rise, which has served as an encouragement to U.S. manufacturers to keep — or return — production operations to the states.

Brooks said he hasn’t viewed China as a stable place to do manufacturing over the long term. “I realized the labor costs were going to go up in China … that was part of the pitch to the VCs when I started the company and first raised money,” he said.

“The $22,000 robot that Rethink will begin selling in October, reports Markoff,  “is the clearest evidence yet that robotics is more than a laboratory curiosity or a tool only for large companies with vast amounts of capital.

“The company is betting it can broaden the market for robots by selling an inexpensive machine that can collaborate with human workers, the way the computer industry took off in the 1980s when the prices of PCs fell sharply and people without programming experience could start using them right out of the box.

“‘It feels like a true Macintosh moment for the robot world,’ said Tony Fadell, the former Apple executive who oversaw the development of the iPod and the iPhone.

Baxter will come equipped with a library of simple tasks, or behaviors — for example, a “common sense” capability to recognize it must have an object in its hand before it can move and release it.”

Brooks said the robot will only be certified for sale in the U.S. and Canada at first, and that the market is “so big that we can have explosive growth for years before we have to go elsewhere.”

The hope, he noted, is that Baxter will lead to a net increase in American jobs by allowing operations to stay in or return to the U.S. “The robot doesn’t do the whole task — it does the dull repetitive ones, and lets the person do the higher-value stuff,” Brooks said.

One analogy, he said, is around the PC and its impact on the job of the office worker. “The PC didn’t replace the office worker. The PC was used by office workers but changed the tasks they did and moved them up the value chain,” he said.

roboticsbusinessreview

Japan: Robot is unbeatable at Rock Paper Scissors game. Video.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Japan: Robot is unbeatable at Rock Paper Scissors games. Video.


A robot developed in Japan is finding fame as the never lose Rock,Paper, Scissors expert.


But the robot has the advantage of high speed sensors that can predict human movement.

Video: Robot Feeds in, Twists and Bends Pipes Simultaneously.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Robot Feeds in, Twists and Bends Pipes Simultaneously

Opton's T-WIN20 KDM is a robot bender that can feed in, twist, and bend pipes simultaneously. This product has received a top award from the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency. By computer-controlling two of these benders at once, work can be done twice as fast as with ordinary benders.

"With conventional benders, a person inserts each pipe, and takes it out after it's been bent. But this robot bender feeds the pipe in, bends it, and outputs it. In other words, it does everything without human assistance. If the user decides where the materials should be output, the robot will do the job for over 20 hours. That means fewer people are needed. Also, regarding the processing speed, if the first bend is done when the pipe goes in, and the last bend is done when the pipe comes out, the first and last bends are done faster than with conventional benders."

With conventional benders, it is necessary to swing the processed items round. But the T-WIN20 robot bender moves itself, so it can always do processing in the same spot, without swinging materials. This also makes it possible to process pipes with parts attached, which was considered difficult with conventional benders.

"With an ordinary bender, the pipe is fed in, twisted, and bent. When there's a part there, the T-WIN20 can take its hand off the pipe, grip the pipe again, then bend it. So the robot bender can even bend pipes that have parts attached."

The T-WIN20 KDM is priced at 15,500,000 yen in Japan, about $194,000. Opton, which currently has offices in Japan, the US, and Germany, plans to step up its sales in overseas markets as well as in Japan.