Hasta La Gadget!

Kokusai Kogyo is developing a disaster prevention AR application the can visualize the depth of water in the event of a tsunami or flooding.
With this prototype, the water level five meters ahead is superimposed on the view from the camera of an iPad.
“Hazard maps are distributed in printed form or published on Web sites, but people don’t know what the situation would be where they are right now. So, we want to let people know, right away, what would happen where they are now, using …

In an industrial-academic project with a chemical engineering research group at Kanto Gakuin University, Ando has developed Nurscal, a system for removing the odor that arises when changing diapers.
“This system uses activated charcoal to absorb odors. This material is called mesopore activated charcoal. The activated charcoal sold by retailers is the micropore type; that has very small pores, and it can only absorb a certain substance; it could be ammonia or formaldehyde. But this …

Tomy has announced an interactive robot dog, called i-SODOG, that works with a smartphone.
This is a follow-up to the i-SOBOT, a bipedal robot released in 2007. i-SODOG is intended for customers of all ages.
“Of course, this robot moves autonomously. It has sensors in its back and head, and two microphones, and it can recognize about 50 spoken words. i-SODOG can also dance, and do regular dog actions, like shaking hands and sitting on command.”
i-SODOG comes with a special-purpose …