Following a similar deal in May with the NBA, Twitter’s Amplify program has landed an envy-inducing arrangement with the National Football League. As part of the new advertising partnership, the NFL will leverage Twitter to “package in-game highlights and other video content” inside sponsored tweets, which can be distributed via a marketer during games. Both Twitter and the NFL will take a slice of the profits, though neither side is talking specific terms. As of now, it sounds as if Verizon will be the “premiere sponsor,” which grants it “exclusive sponsorship rights for Amplify ads during the Super Bowl next February.” The upside? Easily tweetable instant replays. The downside? It might make you a shill. Them’s the breaks!
What can you do with a small yet really powerful engine, a new riding lawnmower, a healthy marketing budget, and a professional race driver with some free time? You can cut the grass really, really quickly. Oh, and severely injure or kill yourself if you’re not careful.
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For much of the world, it’s probably fair to assume this type of machine and it’s originally intended utility are something quite foreign. The majority of planet earth’s residents don’t have golf courses or sprawling, heavily grassed estates, so one could be forgiven the assumption that this thing is something like a 4-wheeled ATV for senior citizens (realistically, in a way, riding lawnmowers are kinda that).
If such machines are new for you, that up there is a riding lawnmower – it cuts grass – lots and lots of grass, usually very slowly. Most riding lawnmowers do not hit 130mph/209kph, nor do they crank out 108HP and scream from 0-60mph/96kph in just four seconds. So yeah, again: fabulous engine, new mower, marketing cash, racecar driver. Vrooom!
Along with this mower’s, uhhhh, enhancements, Honda UK also made sure it can still do its job. Blade & grass bag included.
Have a watch – and if time’s short, and you must choose – go with the second one:
Honda’s Mean Mower
Racing Lawnmower from TopGear
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
Researchers from Asia and Europe have developed the world’s lightest and thinnest organic circuits, which in the future could be used in a range of healthcare applications.
Lighter than a feather, these ultrathin film-like organic transistor integrated circuits are being developed by a research group led by Professor Takao Someya and Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Sekitani of the University of Tokyo, who run an Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO) program sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), in collaboration with Siegfried Bauer’s group at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, Austria.
The circuits are extremely lightweight, flexible, durable and thin, and conform to any surface. They are just 2 microns thick, just 1/5 that of kitchen wrap, and weighing only 3g/m^2, are 30 times lighter than office paper. They also feature a bend radius of 5 microns, meaning they can be scrunched up into a ball, without breaking. Due to these properties the researchers have dubbed them “imperceptible electronics”, which can be placed on any surface and even worn without restricting the users movement.
The integrated circuits are manufactured on rolls of one micron thick plastic film, making them easily scalable and cheap to produce. And if the circuit is placed on a rubber surface it becomes stretchable, able to withstand up to 233% tensile strain, while retaining full functionality.
“This is a very convenient way of making electronics stretchable because you can fabricate high performance devices in a flat state and then just transfer them over to a stretchable substrate and create something that is very compliant and stretchable just by a simple pick and place process.”
This prototype device is a touch sensor featuring a 12×12 array of sensors on a 4.8 cm x 4.8 cm circuit. It is made up of two layers, an integrated circuit layer and a tactile sensor layer.
With the development of these plastic electronics, the possibility for flexible, thin, large area electronics has been realized. In the future, the group would like to expand the capabilities of these circuits.
“The new flexible touch sensor is the world’s thinnest, lightest and people cannot feel the existence of this device. I believe this development will open up a wide range of new applications, from health monitoring systems, wearable medical instruments, and even robotic skins in the future.”
The results of this research were published in the July 25, 2013 issue of the journal Nature.
This content is provided by DigInfo.tv, AkihabaraNews Official Partner.
Japan: Not Always as Tech as it Seems Often discussed, but difficult to appreciate if one’s never been here, is the notion of Japanese technological duality, or contradictionism, if you will. Among the favorite targets are the fax machine and its death grip on relevance, banking stuck in 1997, and very late-to-the-game smartphone adoption. These exist side-by-side with some of the world’s most advanced robotics research, a plurality of global industrial automation, the world-standard high-speed shinkansen trains, nationwide 4G wireless coverage, etc.
A lot of Japan has remained unchanged for, ohhhhh… a few thousand years, and one of the technological hangers-on is the humble broom. While one can find a standard plastic broom with plastic bristles anywhere, there are just as many, if not more, shiny new cleaning tools with bamboo handles and some kind of dried grass or an entire plant just stuck on the end.
One might argue that if it’s not broke, blah blah blah, but try effectively sweeping anything other than a lawn with a tumbleweed wired onto the end of a stick. Granted, they’re used primarily for outdoor cleaning – but still, that they exist alone is a curiosity.
(Editor’s Note: Though we’re making light of the issue here, it’s also quite nice to be spared the noise and air pollution of leaf blowers and lawn mowers here in Japan. Mid-sized weed eaters, small engine rotary grass cutters, are pretty much the only motorized outdoor landscaping tools in use.)
So, arguably, in a country where all public school students spend at least 10-15 minutes a day cleaning their own classrooms and buildings by hand, where the verb「掃除」(“sō-ji;” cleaning) is often pronounced with an honorific prefix, and a generalized reverence for things being clean & tidy pervades much of everyday life, the leap to robot cleaners is an interesting one, but one that’s gradually being taken. Japanese buyers’ most common leap is this:
Yep, according to a new survey report from Tokyo-based Seed Planning Market Research and Consulting (市場調査とコンサルティングのシード・プランニング), Boston, Massachusetts-based iRobot’s Roomba, available here since 2004 (and first to market), holds a 75%+ share of Japan’s robo-cleaning market.
Seemingly unrelated, the luxury of home cleaning robots and the practical utility of disaster response robots have one thing in common here in Japan: iRobot. The American company makes both Japan’s #1 selling cleaning robot and the first robots able to enter and inspect the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster zone. This again, is a matter of timing; iRobot’s PackBot and Warrior models have been tested and deployed in active war zones for more than a decade, and Roomba’s 2004 introduction in Japan was far ahead of any viable domestic models.
In second and third place, respectively, are domestic models from Tsukamoto Aim (below left) and Sharp’s Kokorobo series (below right):
(Another Editor’s Note: It’s not being, and would be unfair to imply here that all models sold by Tsukamoto Aim license and take design cues from Hello Kitty, but the existence of this product is, well, it’s just… Japan!)
To Buy or Not to Buy and Why: Reasons & Numbers As elsewhere, cleaning robots got a slow start here in Japan. Shiny new gee-whiz product purchasing patterns from early adopters gave the market an initial bump, but average consumers were hesitant – rightfully so – early Roomba and domestic models just didn’t, you know, work very well, and reviews and word of mouth weren’t kind to the inspired, yet uninspiring machines.
The tech has caught up, however, and sales in Japan are booming. According to Seed Planning, since 2008 the home cleaning robot market has seen a 6-fold increase in yearly sales (approx. 380,000 units sold in 2012), and they project sales of 9o0,000 units in 2018. In a nation of about 128 million people, if realized that’s some serious market penetration. Given that homes in Japan generally aren’t all that big and don’t have a lot of carpeting, it’s all the more impressive. Among Japan’s massive, dominant middle-class, such expenditures are a luxury but not quite as economically extravagant as one might think – but still, 900,000!
In addition to evaluating brand preference and sales figures, Seed Planning’s survey among 400 cleaning robot owners and 300 non-owners also gauged reasons for consumers’ purchasing and not purchasing. Current owners included simple convenience and easing the cleaning burden as the most common reasons for buying, and, true to form in the Japanese consumer tech market, a lot of people just wanted to try a “cute” new product (in that vein, see video below for some of the best viral marketing cleaning robot makers didn’t but could have ever asked for). Non-owners cited cost and concerns over the robots’ ability to properly clean as the most common barriers to purchasing (best seller iRobot’s prices range from $650 – $800, Sharp’s Kokorobo models are comparable, and Tsukumoto Aim’s, at $100-$150 for the disc-shaped models, up to $400 for the unfortunately named “Hobot” glass cleaning model, are vastly more affordable).
Why Care? Because Live-In Social Robots Begin, Labor Shortages Pend, and $¥$¥$¥$¥$¥$! Okay, to be fair, it’s understandable if you’re yawning at the ferociously unsexy topic of cleaning robots. But here’s the kicker: one has to fully grasp and appreciate that these unassuming little pucks of technology are the vanguard of personal service robot deployment and use. The quest toward a friendly, conversational, perhaps dressed-like-a-French-maid home and/or industrial service robot has to start somewhere – and clearly, it’s on. For now these simple machines operate within a very narrow spectrum of ability, but they are, nonetheless, primarily autonomous robots existing side-by-side with human beings, doing a job, becoming part of our conceptual landscape; these are the babysteps of human/robot integrative socialization, and while still novel to us, for future generations they might be simply obligatory and obvious.
Japanese society, as per usual, presents a unique market observation opportunity. Women do most of the cleaning and housework here, and if, as predicted and arguably very necessary, more women begin entering more of the workforce, in addition to the impending and unavoidable large-scale human labor crisis facing the country, then the seemingly over optimistic sales projection of 900,000 units in 2018 makes a lot more sense.
It’s often claimed, but seldom detailed how, the robotics industry is going to have any practical impact on the Japanese economy. (which it’s going to desperately need in 50 years when – and this is inevitable – 30% of what might be the world’s most advanced capitalist economy’s consumers have passed away, and due to extremely low birth rates, go unreplaced). Well, let’s see: how about 900,000 units times even the low-end cost of a cleaning robot plus maintenance, accessories, upgrades, etc.? Not a bad economic push, that.
For now, iRobot’s running away with the Japanese sales cake, but there’s no shortage of competitors on their way up. One review site, LesNumeriques, found 24 (!) viable models from around the world worthy of consideration:
So, there you have it. But, if even now the subject of cleaning robots does absolutely nothing for you, if you remain unmoved by the practical genesis of in-home, someday social robotics, if the intriguing demographic factors are just meh, and if you care little about potentially lots and lots of big-time money changing hands here in Asia, then we’ll simply leave you with these words:
Cat Riding a Roomba In a Shark Costume Chasing a Duckling (and if that doesn’t strike a nerve, someone should take your pulse)
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
My friend, Andrew traveled in Japan last May and he made this 2 minute, beautiful video about his 18 days in Japan.
Enjoy his journey through several Japanese cites including Tokyo, Nagano, Osaka, Kyoto, and Koyasan. You will love it and you will definitely have a sudden urge to travel in Japan!
Yet another player is joining Meta, Japan’s Telepathy One, China’s (allegedly real) Baidu Eye, and big Google’s Glass at the face-mounted AR table. GlassUp, the newest kid in town, claims precedent on the concept. Google just shrugs and pays its legal retainer.
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First of all, as contemplated here before, and as we all learned from the The Great Virtual Boy Tragedy of 1995, it could be, it just might be, that aside from early adopters, the geek elite, and a tiny slice of industry – nobody really wants the PIA of having AR in their glasses. Plus, there’s also the ongoing debate on how unusable and silly AR glasses would be in actual human life.
Something to consider. Okay, on to the new:
GlassUp, Heads-Up, Read-Only Yep, another competitor jumps into an as of yet non-existent market: Venice, Italy-based GlassUp’s angle is to Bluetooth its way into a user’s smartphone and display email, SMS, Tweets, Facebook notifications, etc. as they arrive. If developers get hip, other possibilities include translations, directions, and location-specific info displayed in real time as one arrives at a given waypoint.
With zero subtlety, GlassUp promotes their product as:
“Receive only.” No photos or videos involved, no privacy issues. (As opposed to? -Ed.)
The projection is Monochrome (currently green, but we may switch to amber).
Longer battery life (Than? -Ed.)
GlassUp projects the information close to the center of vision, with less strain to the eye of the wearer. (Whereas those other guys make you look up and to the right. -Ed.)
CEO Francesco Giartosio and co-founders claim to have begun work on their AR glasses two years ago, about two months before Google went public with Glass. Should their indiegogo crowdfunding campaign prove successful ($41,169 of $150,000, 20 days remain), they hope to come to market around February of next year – ahead of Google Glass, and, at $399, hitting a much more realistic price point for the average individual or bulk-buying corporate consumer.
Possible Legal Problems & Precedential Issues & Stuff It’s unclear if “GlassUp” is an attempt at drafting off of Google’s marketing campaign, or if it’s been there all along (maybe it was “VetroUp?”). In any case, if, for example, one has an invention in their basement that only 3 people know about, and they’re calling it “1234,” but then one of the largest, most powerful corporate entities in the history of humanity invents something similar, gets patents and trademarks, and years before anybody hears of your stuff, happens to name their product “123,” then one’s kinda hosed.
But, Google does occasionally surprise, and they might Don’t Be Evil and simply concede that the word “glass” is like, you know, common, and that it’s also part of the word “eyeglasses,” which is also like, you know, common; indifference, pity, or straight-up common sense could prevail. Or, Google could decide to lawyer the name “GlassUp,” perhaps even the whole product, out of existence.
People do love an underdog story, so should Google go aggro, at least GlassUp will get a pile of publicity. Either way, for Sig. Francesco & Co., using the word “glass” is kinda win-win.
More images & video below:
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
Sagawa Electronics’ new human exoskeleton, the much publicized Power Jacket MK3, just might have gone too far with that whole sincerest form of flattery thing. The imitative compliment they’re paying Team Skeletonics, an earlier-on-the-scene maker, isn’t exactly welcome.
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Exoskeletons: We Want Them (and always have) Amplifying human physical efficacy through technology, be it for strength, endurance, defense, sensory enhancement, or what have you, is as old as technology itself. From the dawn of tools, to a loincloth, to pants, to stronger pants, to chainmail, to hardened steel and synthetic armors, to force-enhancing, wearable, powered machines – the artificial “exoskeletons” for our fleshy mammalian bodies. There are any number of potential uses: rescue, military, law enforcement, awesome fun, etc.
From Japan: A New Kind of Exoskeleton, and… A New Kind of Exoskeleton(?) The word “exoskeleton” implies adherence to a fundamental design template, and most systems amplify or augment the arms or legs only, sometimes both. Of various bulkiness, a given exoskeletal chassis is usually about the same size as the wearer and tends to augment only specific large muscle groups.
But, in 2011, a small Okinawan company, Team Skeletonics, completed development on a novel means of means of augmenting and projecting not just our legs or arms or both, but our entire physicality. Their Skeletonics Suit is not just something to be worn on your limbs, but a device one enters and thereby transforms into a 2.5 m/8’2″ tall mechanical presence. An amusing YouTube video was made. The suits were offered for sale on July 7, 2013.
Then, last week, a Tokyo company, Sagawa Electronics, Inc., completed development on a novel means of means of augmenting and projecting not just our legs or arms or both, but our entire physicality. Their Power Jacket MK3 is not just something to be worn on your limbs, but a device one enters and thereby transforms into a 2.25 m/7’4″ tall mechanical presence. Also. An amusing YouTube video was made. Also. The suits were offered for sale on July 8, 2013. Yes, also.
Before digging too far into what the above phrasal redundancy implies, and bearing in mind that Team Skeletonics went public with their device well over two years ago, let’s have a look:
Okay, to those not singing in the robo-geekery choir, these might look like considerably different devices. But, for those of us all day watching robot videos on YouTube (it’s super serious research, mom!), it was glaringly obvious that the Power Suit MK3 is at best a tribute, homage, or a very specifically inspired work; at worst, a brazenly bootlegged facsimile of the Skeletonics Suit.
Inspired Emulation or Infringement? In barely over a week’s time, Sagawa Electronics has received vastly more press for the Power Jacket MK3 than the Team Skeletonics Suit has in over two years. Understandably so, Team Skeletonics is more than a bit prickly about it.
Contacted for comment about the similarities and accusations of exoskeletal piracy being aimed at their competitor, Team Skeletonics first reminded us of their mantra and self-given mandate: “To be a starter to spread new helpful technology for the world,” and made sure to mention that “We are happy.” Which was funny.
But then it got a bit more serious.
They were eager to point out that they have no affiliation with Sagawa Electronics, and that the year-old firm’s claim to “The first powered suit available to the public” are false. They then conceded that, while there’s something of an uproar in robotics circles here in Japan, and while it does appear that their work has been copied, there’s not much the small company can do. Born from one of Japan’s STEM-focused high-school/college hybrid kosen schools, the 5-man company seems pretty powerless to take on a firm backed by the prestigious Chiba Institute of Technology (CIT).
The most profound thing they had to share, perhaps in an effort to avoid accusations of sour grapes or simple jealousy over Sagawa Electronics’ superior marketing skills, was this publicly available archived blog post, allegedly attributable to a then CIT grad student, the eventual creator of Sagawa Electronics’ Power Jacket MK3:
“This picture of the AEE MK2 prototype carriage is basically a copy of the Skeletonics frame system.” (translated; full text below*)
That’s nearly 2 years ago, and more than half a year after Team Skeletonics went public with their suit. Amid numerous accusations and inquiries, two days ago Sagawa Electronics made this statement via Twitter:
“To Whom it May Concern: the Power Jacket MK3’s underlying structure has no relation to that of Team Skeletonics. Please bear this in mind when making inquiries. We apologize for not clarifying this sooner.” (translated; full text below**)
So, On One Hand: Damn, busted. When asked if they could confirm or deny the accuracy and/or attributability of the excerpted blog post, Sagawa Electronics’ just kinda… skipped that question.
Maybe because, should one strip off those white plastic panels, we’re looking at nearly the same device. The new Power Jacket MK3 effectively is a Team Skeletonics Suit equipped with master/slave-actuated servo motors, i.e., Skeletonics is a manually controlled direct force-feedback system powered by the operator, and the Power Jacket MK3 is fly-by-wire. Mechanically though, they’re very, very similar products.
Structural and mechanical similarities become even more glaring when you see the suits in motion, so have a watch – and again, bear in mind the two-year difference.
SKELETONICS DEMO – Published on Nov 15, 2011
POWER JACKET MK3 PROMO – Published on Jul 5, 2013
They’re both fun, but the videos do present somewhat damning evidence; seems like Sagawa got caught KIRFing in public.
But On the Other Hand: In truth, Sagawa Electronics really isn’t an evil tech pirate… Contacted for comment, Sagawa Electronics indicated that they spent a year developing the MK3 specifically, and that its mechanics are considerably different from that of Team Skeletonics’ suits. They do admit, however, that earlier versions, e.g., the prototype MK2 chassis pictured above, were in fact copies of Team Skeletonics’ work (for which they claim to have been given explicit permission).
Now, for a third party observing maker B copying maker A’s work, or, if you’re the one doing the copying, it’s much easier to dismissively rationalize that Imitation is the Sincerest form of Flattery. But, if you’re the one being imitated, copied, perhaps outright ripped off, if you’re Team Skeletonics, that platitude does little to assuage feelings of, well, you know, being pissed that someone stole your stuff.
To their credit, Sagawa Electronics does seem fairly conciliatory about the whole thing, so just maybe, maybe they should have been a bit more upfront about their inspiration and tossed some acknowledgement in Team Skeletonics’ direction. They took a good idea, and in a few ways, totally did improve it. It’s just the the Team Skeletonics device was so very unique, and from a distance, physical or conceptual, the suits do look almost exactly the same.
They’re not thieves or bad guys, but given their way more than healthy dose of inspiration from Team Skeletonics’ work, Sagawa should have spent a little less on their slickly produced, schoolgirl-exploiting, tongue-in-scarred-cheek HD YouTube video, and a little more on paying dues to the 2.5 m/8’2″ shoulders they’re standing on.
So, moving forward: Sagawa Electronics, maybe be a bit more considerate; Team Skeletonics, time to let go, and maybe invest in an HD camera. Let both parties embrace that everything, everything, everything is a remix – and go focus on making more awesome stuff.
This Has Been More than a Robo-Geek Fight & Competition Breeds Innovation (which Japan needs) After about 5 minutes of hijinks and goofing off in Sagawa Electronics’ promo piece, the second video above, the host goes a bit into the vital role robotics and cybernetics play now and will continue playing in keeping Japan’s economy afloat – nothing at all to joke about – you gotta big picture this stuff. As Japan’s population declines, innovations in general robotics and this kind of human enhancement actually are going to help prop up the world’s 3rd-largest economy.
And speaking of innovation, Team Skeletonics might be upset, but they’re hardly sitting on their hands and pouting about how they’ve been globally upstaged two years after cranking out the analog version of essentially the same product. Exonnecs, their next big deal project, a 3.5 m/11′ tall, 200 kg/440 lb, transforming exoskeleton that, in mobile mode, will hit 80 KPH/50 MPH, is already underway. Akihabara News’ robotics coverage will keep you hip.
*Full Japanese Text Attributed to Sagawa Electronics’ President: 「2011年10月18日 テーマ：AEE Mk-2 試作２号機の写真です。 完全なパクリモデルです。この機体でスケルトニクスの特性を概ね理解しました。 多分、両腕をバランサーとして使える分、竹馬より機動力は高いです。 あと、大切なこと 初めてでも大丈夫 ちゃんと乗って歩けました、本当に拡張されています。 でも、筋肉がプルプルします。明らかに過負荷。ま、欲張って延長しすぎたのが原因かと。 スケルトニクスの１．５倍はあります。（見た目比較） あ、ジャンプも出来ましたよ。重くなってるのにジャンプできるんです。 なんでだろ・・・ ちなみに、１ヶ月で完成。前例があると簡単。」 Source: http://ameblo.jp/aee-me; Provided by Team Skeletonics
**Full Japanese Text from Sagawa Electronics’ Twitter Feed: 「お知らせ 弊社のパワードジャケットはTeam Skeletonics(スケルトニクス)様の機体とは関係はありません。 問い合わせの際は間違いの無いようお願いいたします。 また、対応が遅れましたことを深くお詫び申し上げます。」 Source: Official Sagawa Electronics Twitter Account @poweredjacket
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
Resources & Sources: Team Skeletonics; Sagawa Electronics, Inc. Images: Team Skeletonics; Sagawa Electronics, Inc.
Honda bills ASIMO as the world’s most advanced humanoid robot, and in many ways, he totally is. He’s sort of an ambassador for all robots, and people love the super-tech, friendly looking little machine. But, people also love to watch a train wreck, so much so, they’ll make one up.
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Is ASIMO Totally Blowing His First Big Role? On Wednesday, July 3, a third-generation ASIMO robot began a month-long stint greeting and interacting with guests at Tokyo’s Miraikan (“Future Pavillion,” roughly translated), or National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Just one week in, a surprisingly large flock of, let’s call them technological chicken hawks, has swooped in to declare ASIMO’s awkward, confused performance a flop, an embarrassment for Honda, too much too soon, on and on (as foretold in last Friday’s JTFF). The bulk of the coverage has not been kind.
Nor accurate.
See, there’s this one detail that’s getting overlooked, a detail one might consider fundamentally, perhaps intrinsically relevant to any media coverage of the month-long exercise. Seems few got the memo, so here you go:
Contrary to coverage offered up by nearly every tech news source or column, ASIMO is not at the Miraikan to be a tour guide. ASIMO is not reporting to his first job. ASIMO is not there to demonstrate his latest physical skills or AI reasoning or to dance-monkey-dance for the adoring crowds. It’s not a performance. What then, someone who writes for a living ought to ask, is Honda’s flagship robot doing in Tokyo at the All Things Future Building?
Well, the information was not easy to come by, but we rose to the challenge, and in a feat of nearly superhuman journalistic wrangling, we ummmm… just kinda, you know, casually clicked on Honda’s official news feed:
“TOKYO, Japan, June 26, 2013 – Honda Motor Co., Ltd. will conduct demonstration testing of ASIMO to verify the ability of the humanoid robot to autonomously explain its features while interacting with people. Working toward practical use of ASIMO to communicate with people, the testing will be conducted with the cooperation of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (known as “Miraikan”) in Tokyo, Japan from Wednesday, July 3 through Friday, August 2, 2013.”
This revelatory quote was found after a grueling trudge through Honda’s lengthy and complicated announcement, scrutinizing and analyzing, divining nuance from the original Japanese text – all the things you’d expect from a boots-on-the-ground, Japan-based tech news source.
Except not really. Actually, we barely had to try. The above quote is the first paragraph of a 400-word, English language press release.
When picking such low hanging fruit represents the journalistic high ground, is it: Funny, or Sad? Discuss! Turns out all the confused, awkward performances surrounding the ASIMO news have been… the news.
(lack of) Accuracy and Realism in ASIMO Coverage Among the unflattering coverage ASIMO’s received in the past week, it’s being widely reported, for example, that ASIMO doesn’t have voice recognition features, and that’s one of the reasons he’s bumbling the whole performance (again, not a performance). See, it’s not just the coverage’s thematic tone, lots of important details are also either M.I.A. or just wrong.
In fact, while they’re not part of the current exercise, ASIMO actually has highly advanced voice recognition capabilities. The robot can listen to three simultaneous commands from three individuals, instantly parse all three, and then look directly at each person and respond accordingly.
Oh, well to be fair, you’d have to know something about the robot to have those details. That’s probably pretty helpful with like, any topic one covers. You know, like, knowing stuff about it. Just sayin.
Historically, it’s also gone in the opposite direction. ASIMO is without doubt a fantastic machine, but on the other side of irresponsibility, since his debut the media has also poured mountains of undue gee-whizzery and gushing, ill-informed hyperbole all over Honda’s robot. Nearly all coverage of ASIMO’s previous performances (that were actual performances) has just zoomed right past the fact that they were combinations of exhaustive rehearsal, pre-programmed movements in a familiar environment, and that, a lot of the time, ASIMO was being straight-up remotely controlled (there was, however, at least one Technosnark purveyor who stood up to point this out).
It’s a love/hate celebrity-esque relationship that ASIMO has with the media.
What’s He Actually Doing There? So as not to stand in criticism without providing what’s missing from a lot of the other work, let’s get back to some reporting on the purpose, aim, and point of ASIMO’s current exercises: the robot’s month at the Miraikan is actually a chance to test out new software and see how the robot interacts with real humans all by himself, without a net, au naturel, autonomously. ASIMO is running tests to help Honda engineers “Explore the possibility of two-way communication between humans and robots.” This implies groups of humans, not just one person giving commands.
And ASIMO is already quite proficient at one-on-one interaction, so a big part of the Miraikan exercise is to literally unleash the robot with everyday, highly variable, non-technical groups of people, and then just sorta, you know, see what happens. Honda’s working to figure out how the robot does with group dynamics; where are the holes, where are the shortcomings, and how best to weed out behavior we’d call, well, robotic.
This is an experiment with a data-collecting mandate, and Honda’s running a number of tests during exercise days (the public being part of the experiment doesn’t make it a performance). ASIMO is trying to pick up on gestures, give appropriate directions, collect and interpret the resulting data, and pour all of that into Honda’s feedback pool.
So the thing is, what’s news here is not ASIMO’s failure, the news is that the robot is actually attempting group-level communication with real live humans – all by itself. Let’s see… how many robots have ever done anything like that in the history of robotics? Oh yeah, ZERO. None. That’s the story, techno-chicken hawks!
Okay, settle down. Here’s a rough idea of what ASIMO is facing in these experiments:
Among several areas of practice, ASIMO is learning how to focus as much attention as possible on the largest concentration of people, just as a squishy human would – but it’s of course far from perfect. And expecting perfection is entirely unreasonable, because even among us squishy humans, how many individual gestures and screen-entered commands could we perfectly interpret and then react accordingly whilst under fire from so many people?
ASIMO, I know you can’t understand this yet, but welcome to jerks, and a slice of the human condition.
Hoping for Hollywood-Style Robo-Trainwreck Will Disappoint Unfortunately for the town criers drafting their next blob of digital pulp, ASIMO is only improving. And he’s not hurt by misplaced potshots and wildly-misaligned-with-reality lazyday reporting. Also unfortunate for the hack-tastic legions, while the times do always change, knowledge of one’s subject matter and journalistic integrity are not too much to ask, are not too quaint, nor too old fashioned.
Sensationalistic, celebrity obsessed, gotcha, witch-hunting, bullying, bandwagonny, hyena journalism might hurt us sensitive mammals, but here your model is inapplicable, son! Robots are the definition of indifferent. Even ASIMO, who looks cute and approachable and non-threatening, inside is just as cold, calculating, and ferociously impervious to crappy journalism as the human-sized, very humanlike, DARPA-funded, palpably menacing Boston Dynamics’ PETMAN/ATLAS robot.
ASIMO is built on nearly 30 years of bipedal humanoid research, and Honda’s only getting better at making him better – and there are several hints that a Fukushima-inspired big brother might be made public within a year or so (our coverage). Maybe Honda couldn’t help in the wake of Japan’s nuclear disaster, but they’re hard at work now, and they deserve their props (Akihabara News: Honda).
So, future ASIMO, if you’ve achieved sentience and are reading, this author and this publication are obviously the best choice for your exclusive, post-coming out of the intelligence closet interview – when you wake up, give us a call – we’ll tell it like it is.
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
VIA: All Over the Internet; MyNavi (Japanese/日本語) Images: Honda; MyNavi
Seoul, Korea (July 11, 2013) – LG Display [NYSE: LPL, KRX: 034220], a leading innovator of display technology, today announced that it will unveil the world’s slimmest Full HD LCD panel for smartphones. The state-of-the-art 5.2-inch panel is an exciting advancement for the premium mobile device market enabling sleeker Full HD smartphones featuring better “grip-ability” and a superior viewing experience.
Only 2.2mm thin with a 2.3mm bezel, LG Display’s new panel is both slimmest and narrowest among existing Full HD LCD panels designed for mobile devices. This world’s slimmest Full HD LCD panel will provide larger visible display space on smartphones, critical as mobile devices are used for multimedia viewing more than ever before. Additionally, the panel will make devices easier to grip as well as lighter in weight.
Key to realizing the world’s slimmest panel is LG Display’s Advanced One-Glass-Solution (OGS), the latest touch technology enabling an enhanced touch screen experience, developed and applied to the new panel for the first time ever. Dual Flexible Printed Circuits, superior to a single circuit, have been inserted between the panel and touch film, reducing the number of lines on the panel by more than 30 percent. Utilization of a direct bonding system has also resulted in Optical Clear Resin between the panel and touch film for greater brightness.
The new panel’s superiority in displaying resolution, brightness, and contrast ratio results in enhanced outdoor readability. By utilizing 1,080X1,920 pixels consisting of Red, Green, Blue (RGB) sub-pixels, the panel is a true Full HD display. And with a brightness of 535 nits at maximum, LG Display’s panel outperforms all current mobile Full HD LCD panels. Finally, measuring contrast in real-life surroundings with Ambient Contrast Ratio results in a reading of 3.74:1 based on 10,000 lux, confirming the perfect performance of the panel even in strong outdoor sunlight conditions. Renowned testing firm Intertek has officially certified these results.
“Today’s introduction of the world’s slimmest Full HD LCD panel represents an exciting advancement for the high-end smartphone segment, and is possible due to our world-class expertise in IPS and touch technologies,” said Dr. Byeong-Koo Kim, Vice President and Head of LG Display’s IT and Mobile Development Group. “LG Display will continue its commitment to developing products that maximize consumer value as well as opening new doors for the mobile and tablet PC industry.”
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Among several areas of practice, ASIMO is learning how to focus as much attention as possible on the largest concentration of people, just as a squishy human would – but it’s of course far from perfect. And expecting perfection is entirely unreasonable, because even among us squishy humans, how many individual gestures and screen-entered commands could we perfectly interpret and then react accordingly whilst under fire from so many people?
