Japan’s robot otaku can soon lay their hands on yet another of those electro-mechanical marvels, but this time the robot isn’t cute. No, this new model, made by Tokyo-based robot venture Poseidon, is supposed to be mean for a change. And its name (Mad Hurricane) is pretty bad ass, too.

Mad Hurricane can perform a number of motions: walk in four directions, swirl to the right or left, stand up by himself when he’s on his back or face and, most importantly, kick and punch in six variations. Powered by a battery, the robot stands 40cm tall and weighs 2.4kg. It’s made of aluminum,  has six built-in gyro sensors and a total of 20 joints.

You can control the robot with a remote control and program it to have him perform “personalized” attack patterns, too.

Poseidon says they’ll start manufacturing Mad Hurricane once they get 10 pre-orders. Production will stop after having released 30 units, with each one costing $900.

This video shows Mad Hurricane in action:

Japanese conglomerates Fuji Heavy Industries, Sumitomo and Subaru are developing a new robot [JP, PDF] that’s able to clean office buildings autonomously. The yet to be named robot (pictured on the left) is sized at just 50×45x80cm, meaning it’s able to maneuver even along narrow paths. Its functions include vacuuming the floors and picking up garbage.

The robot weighs 95kg and is powered by a 24V battery that has a battery life of 2.5 hours. It can travel as fast as 30 meters per minute, avoiding obstacles along the way through built-in sensors and a laser system. The cleaning robot you see on the right of the picture is an earlier model from last year.

The companies plan to commercialize the new robot by the end of next year. It will then likely be priced at between $35,000 and $46,000, with the companies hoping to sell 50 units in the first twelve months.

A research group from Japan’s University of Electro-Communications has developed a mini robot that’s able to move freely inside water and gas pipes with a diameter of 10cm or more. The robot can climb up and down pipes as long as they are made of iron as it uses a magnet for its magic.

It’s equipped with a CCD camera, a LED light and a battery. The robot travels inside the pipe on four wheels, shines light into it and sends images it captures, for example of a crack, back to the user through a cable.

The developers say their prototype can be remote-controlled and is equipped with a magnet that moves like a pendulum. The vibrations it creates keep the robot stuck to the iron pipe at all times. The magnet and the pipe pull against each other, making it possible for the robot to smoothly travel inside the pipe.

According to the developers, the current prototype is just 11cm long and 8×8cm wide and tall, meaning it’s suitable for most water and gas pipes and eliminates the need to dig them up for inspection.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

As a huge conglomerate, NEC is active in a lot of areas. But unknown to many people outside Japan, the company is quite aggressive in the robotics field, too. Their PaPeRo, a cute helper robot, for example, has been around since 1997 already. And now, just in time for a robot exhibition that currently takes place in Tokyo, the company shows an updated version of the little guy.

The new PaPerRo R500 stands 38cm tall and weighs 6.5kg. It can perform about 200 different operations, for example holding simple conversations with humans. NEC equipped the robot with special face recognition software so that PaPeRo can identify up to 30 different people and change his behavior depending on who he’s speaking to.

Powered by a lithium-ion battery, PaPeRo can work for around 100 minutes before having to return to the recharging station, which you can see on the picture above (he does this automatically).

NEC plans to lease out the robots to anyone interested for $600 per month soon – but only in Japan.

Via Robot Watch [JP]

Tokyo-based (and globalized) bearing supplier NSK has announced [JP] the development of an autonomous mobile robot that one day will be able to assist people in wheel chairs. The main selling point of the so-called “Human Assist Guidance Robot” is that it can detect obstacles and guide users through them. And uneven surfaces or slopes aren’t a problem either.

The robot uses lasers and virtual repulsive forces to calculate distances to obstacles and their location. It’s able to guide people smoothly through minimizing those repulsive forces.

The way the robot works is that users apply force to a handle inside its body to control the speed and direction of travel. The harder you push, the faster the robot goes. An independent two-wheel drive and a caster mechanism (pictured above) make sure the robot drives smoothly, even on corrugated surfaces.

Via Tech-On

HUBO Walking! HUBO Taichi! HUBO with sword! HUBO aiming for your heart and lungs!

This clever Korean robot won’t kill you (yet) but it does move in a surprisingly life-life fashion. Seriously: how far are we until we’ve hit Surrogrates territory (an actually OK movie, by the way).

“Instead of focusing solely on determining routes to a specified waypoint, our system utilizes analysis of driver behavior in order to identify the set of goals the driver would like to achieve.” That is innovative, and as the video above indicates, AIDA can work to help you efficiently navigate your home city. It still looks suspiciously destination-oriented, and I wonder how much our continued reliance on navigation products is going to make us miss out of serendipitous discoveries, like the mom-and-pop movie theater nearby is showing your favorite B movie, or a big multi-family yard sale is taking place this Saturday. The more we rely on technology to get us where we’re going, the less likely we are to see what’s going on nearby.

AIDA is a product of the MIT SENSElab, the MIT Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group, and the Volkswagen Group of America’s Electronics Research Lab. The full press release is available.

The Future University (cool name) in Hakodate, Northern Japan, presented the Ikabo, a giant squid robot at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo (that ended on Sunday). Not only is the robot tall (2.2m), cute and pretty heavy (weight: 200kg), but it also mimics your hand movements via Wii motion controllers.

Ikabo is based on an air servo system, and you can also move his head and even his eyes with the Wii controllers. It makes noises to scare potential alien invaders away (the robot was actually part of a promotional campaign that used this scenario to boost the numbers of tourists in Hakodate). Ikabo has a total of 12 joints that make him move like a real squid (well, kind of).

Here’s a short video I took at the expo that shows how Ikabo works:

Japan has produced many humanoids in the past years, but making them move in one way or the other is usually a challenge. Kyoto-based Robo Garage has unveiled Ropid [JP] today, a mini robot that runs on two legs and can jump as high as 8cm.

Ropid stands 38cm tall and at 16kg, it’s pretty heavy. The little guy has 29 joints and four gyro-sensors in the body and is powered by a lithium-ion battery. He can react to voice commands, so if you tell him to jump, he will do so. His movements aren’t really elegant but OK.

Ropid (the name is  a mix between “robot” and rapid”) is currently just a prototype, with Robo Garage saying there isn’t a release date set yet.

This video shows how he runs:

This video shows how he jumps:

Via Robot Watch [JP]

Robots now enter the agriculture industry, too. First the award-winning rice-transplanting robot, now this: Major Japanese conglomerate Fuji Heavy Industries has developed an agricultural robot that can tend fields autonomously.

The company says the robot is the first of its kind. It runs on gas and is 2m long, 60cm wide and 1m high. It emits and receives laser signals to orient itself, gauging the distance to special reflective plates (which are placed at regular intervals of about 10 meters).

Fuji Heavy says the robot can grow fruit and vegetables independently, and it can even be used inside greenhouses. The company plans to start selling the machine next fiscal year for around $100,000. My apologies for the small picture, but that’s all that’s available now.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has showcased its most spectacular robot at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo today, the “cybernetic human” HRP-4C. The humanoid can’t move her legs, but the way she moves her arms, head and facial muscles is unbelievably human-like. Or you could say unbelievably creepy.

She usually works as a model, bridezilla and a singer by the way.

Here are two videos I took at the event today, showing the 158cm tall HRP-4C in action. In the videos, she’s “acting” in case you wonder what she’s saying.

Video 1:

Video 2:

First the dish washing robot, then an assist cart robot: It was a big day for Panasonic’s robot division. This cart robo, a one-seater, is specifically designed for use in hospitals and nursing homes where it’s supposed to move medical equipment and things like wheelchairs.

Panasonic claims the robo vehicle will even help staff move around hospital beds, as it can carry equipment weighing 200kg. Japan has the oldest society in the world (over 20% of the population are older than 65), and the company said it plans to invest more resources into the health and welfare robot sector in the next years.

The assist cart robo for hospitals is to be commercialized as early as spring next year. Panasonic plans to sell a version for use in other places for about $1,000 in or after 2012.

Via Kaden Watch [JP]

We have reported about a number of household robots from Japan in the past. Those machines covered areas like preparing sushi or pancakes, cleaning the house or the toilet. Last December, we reported about a kitchen robot that’s able to do your dishes without breaking them. And today, Panasonic showcased an updated version of that very robot in Tokyo.

Equipped with sensitive arms (that have a number of pressure and contact sensors), the robot can pick dishes out of a sink, rinse them and then automatically load them in a dishwasher. The robot works so accurately that the dished won’t even get scratched, Panasonic claims.

And this robot is just the start. Panasonic says they want to achieve sales worth $1.1 billion with robots (industrial models included) by 2015. The company waits for the Japanese government to come up with safety standards laws specifically laid out for home-use robots (the laws are expected to be ready by 2012). Once that happens, Panasonic plans to develop and commercialize more household robots as quickly as possible.

Via Kaden Watch [JP]

No pictures for this yet, but after conquering nursing homes, schools and hospitals, Japan’s robots are finally ready to get into office spaces, too. Fujitsu’s new and yet to be named gofer robot is an all-round talent, designed to be used mainly during office hours. It can move among the staff and actually gets work done as well.

The Fujitsu robot is jointly developed with major Japanese furniture maker Okamura and a team of university researchers. It’s being described as cylindrical, 120cm tall, it weighs 60kg and has a diameter of 62cm. After feeding it with a given office’s layout, it can move around the office by itself (at 1.2m per second) and stops whenever it comes as close as 10cm to a person or object.

The robo gofer is equipped with a camera and a set of sensors so it can avoid obstacles. Needless to say it’s connected to the web and features an LCD touch screen so that human colleagues can quickly search for stuff on Google, for example. Fujitsu also thought of a shelf space in the robot’s body so you can make it carry letters or copier paper from one colleague to the other.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Japan-based Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) and robot venture Vstone have announced the joint development of a mini humanoid [JP] that’s able to handle objects dexterously through a remote control. The so-called Robovie-PC is already on sale in Japan and costs $4,500.

The humanoid is 38cm tall, weighs 2.2kg and has a total of 20 joints in its body (six in each foot, three in each arm and two in the head). It’s also equipped with 5 sensors and a head-mounted 1.3MP CMOS camera that you can connect to your PC via USB. The robot is powered by an Atom Z530 processor (1.60GHz).

You can make Robovie-PC hold and transfer objects between its hands. The way it works is that you have to sit in front of a PC that’s connected to the robot, wearing special gloves fitted with markers (see the picture above). A camera mounted to the PC traces the markers in 3D, and the robot’s hands mimic the way you move the gloves. For example, the robot will grasp an object if you tilt your hand so the glove markers are at 90 degrees.

Robovie-PC only supports Windows XP/Vista/7 and Linux PCs. ATR and Vstone hope to sell 50 units within the next 12 months.

The so-called Fukitorimushi (”wipe-up bug” in Japanese), a cleaning robot of a very special kind, has been around for quite a while now. But what was showcased recently during a tech exhibition in Tokyo was the newest version. And the thing is still creepy as hell.

What you see is basically a robotic pillow that can move around in closed rooms like an inchworm and cleans the floors by making use of the world’s first nano-level superfine polyester fiber it’s mainly made of. The cloth can absorb oil and pick up ultra-fine dust particles.

When the Fukitorimushi finds a dirty spot, it lights up red, starts rubbing the dirt away and moves on. It’s able to find its way back to the charging station by itself, too.

The Fukitorimushi was designed by Panasonic, and Japan-based chemicals company Teijin provided the nano technology. The question is now who would want such a robo pillow move around in the living-room.

Have a look at the video below to see how the thing works:

An upgraded version of the VOCALOID, with an added conversation function and a new voice, help to make movement of the HRP-4C a bit more sophisticated. And as you can see here, a humanoid robot with human-like singing with an accompanying performance is sure to attract much attention.

VOCALOID is Yamaha’s proprietary vocal-processing technology developed for the manufacture of desktop music.

Another week, another healthcare robot coming put of Japan (and this is generally a good thing). This new model, named Taizou [JP], is developed by the country’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and was unveiled today. Its purpose is to motivate the elderly to exercise more in order to prevent diseases and stay young mentally.

The 70cm-tall robot (weight: 7kg) may look like an ordinary stuffed toy, but Taizou is actually pretty sophisticated. He has a total of 20 joints in his body, each with 26 degrees of freedom. His servo motors enable him to perform around 30 different exercises (while standing or sitting on a chair). Taizou is also able to speak a few sentences and can understand if a human instructor talks to him through built-in speech recognition software.

Taizou is already being tested in a health facility in Japan. The makers plan to offer short-term rentals for the robot from April next year. They also aim at lowering Taizou’s price, which stands at $8,000 at the moment.

Watch him make his moves in the video embedded below:

Via Robot Watch [JP]

Japan is the nation of robots. Everybody knows that. It’s also the nation of cell phones. So why not mix robots and cell phones? That’s what the country’s second biggest mobile phone provider KDDI au thought and today presents the iida Polaris, a robotic cell phone [link in English], for the first time (click here for my iida concept photo report from April).

Truth be told, the Polaris looks more like a cell phone installed in a dock and it’s just a concept, but it’s pretty and makes more sense than Sony’s Rolly. The idea is to offer some kind of life recorder that monitors your health, by processing diet data, keeping a record of your physical activity, giving tips on when and what to eat etc. KDDI au has been jointly developed with another company called Flower Robotics (which recently gave us the mannequin robot).

And it does that in a supposedly “intelligent” way, meaning the Polaris “learns” over time and is able to adjust to your personal lifestyle.

Watch the (pretty cool) video embedded below to get an idea how this is supposed to work one day in the future. I want this thing to fly next to me when I leave the house.

One of the fields in which robotics really makes sense is healthcare, where Japan is certainly the most productive country. And now we get another healthcare robot, created by a company called Japan Logic Machine.

The venture has developed a healthcare assist robot with a specific purpose: It can move people as heavy as 200kg, for example from their bed to a wheelchair. Dubbed Regina, the robot outperforms existing Japan Logic Machines that have to give up at around 80kg.

The robot is almost ready, with the company hoping to ship the first units to medical institutions in Japan by fall 2010. One Regina robot will cost between $60,000-80,000.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]