Hasta La Gadget!

Honda announced its ASIMO-inspired Walking Assist Device is being leased to additional hospitals.

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It Original content from Ubergizmo.

The latest iPhone accessory to enhance your music experience looks very hyper and annoying. It comes from Tomy and is an iPhone dock that dances to your tunes. It is compatible with iPhone 4/4S and iPhone 5. It’s basically a humanoid-shaped stand that moves its limbs to the beat of the music being played.

Just put your iPhone in the stand, turn on the music and watch it dance. As an added bonus, you can download the Face Thing app on your iPhone and put your own or someone else’s face on the iPhone. The app uses a motion portrait technique to sync the image with the dancing body. I don’t think it would take long to find this thing completely annoying. It might make a good gift for someone you hate.

This thing measures 17×13×10.5 cm and comes in three colors: red, white and blue for about ¥3465 yen (~$35 USD).

[Nlab via Damngeeky]

This smartphone stand features a cat that looks to be scratching your phone. Weird.

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It Original content from Ubergizmo.

Japanese Robot Art – It’s Good, Man!
Illustration, product packaging, statues & sculpture, and even some transhumanist pin-ups; for decades Japan’s been pounding out the robot art like nobody’s business. Last week’s robotics piece examined the artistic legacy influence of giant Japanese robots on the upcoming film Pacific Rim, but this week it’s just cool robot art for the sake of looking at cool robot art.

Some readers might just see the shiny, and that’s cool – some might find a new robo-wallpaper or screensaver, and that’s fun – or, as happens more than one might suspect, the exploration and enjoyment of sci-fi imagery and entertainment can result in actual factual inspiration.

Art Can Make Science, The -Fi Drives the Sci-
A guy named Martin Cooper, inspired by the communicators from the original Star Trek series (60s), went on to lead the Motorola team that invented the first mobile phone (70s). The Panasonic/ActiveLink exoskeletal Power Loader & Power Loader Light look a whole lot like the safety-yellow power loader from Aliens. The 1959 novel Starship Troopers has been cited as a major inspiration for those working on real-life badass robot suits. Sikorsky’s helicopters & Lake’s early submarines were heavily inspired by Jules Verne. It goes on.

Art & The Contemporary Robotics Revolution
The social and economic significance of the ongoing explosion in practical robotics shows a lot of parallels to the communications boom and media upheaval centered around the rise of the internet – in all likelihood, it’s not going to slow down. At all. And one has to wonder how many Gen-X roboticists fell in love with their field as children playing, watching, reading the Transformers, Voltron, Gundam, Star Wars, etc. Certainly went that way with at least one dorky keyboard pounder, as well.

Whatever the result, humans need art – and those of use with deep-seated robo-geekery proclivities, we need robot art. And so, enjoy the four forms below, and see the links at the bottom if you need a little more enjoyment, something that’ll look cool on your laptop or phone, and if the imagery below inspires you to invent, kindly link here when you go public, yeah?!

Form #1 – Illustration Because Illustration:
Doesn’t have to be a whole lot of practicality to robot art, just looking good is good enough. The main image above and the first work below is that of Toshiaki Takayama, who goes all kinds of robo-cyborgy on humans and dragons and other imaginary stuff:

Another great illustration is this Gundam going all robo-rage on… something, via Concept Robots, artist unfindable:

Form #2 – Transformers Box Art:
Now, this is also illustration, but for marketing and product packaging, of course. These images, perhaps modern vintage, were included on the 80s Transformers packaging. With plastic & metal toy in hand, these were the mind’s landscape.

In Japan it was this:

And across the Pacific:

Form #3 – Statues & Sculpture:
The most well-known and pun-intended visible robot statue is the life-size, 1:1-scale Gundam that pun-intended pops up from time to time around Tokyo. Ironically, this is Gundam Suit is, well, Mobile. The attention to detail is fantastic:

And just how big is the 1:1-scale Gundam? Could ask this dude:

Form #4 – Japanese Robot Art for Big Boys & Girls (CAUTION – the link below will deliver some NSFW):
For those who’d like a little more, ummm… nudity and sexuality in their robot art, a good place to begin is the work of nasty robot airbrush wizard Hajime Sorayama. His iconic and widely recognizable work was transhuman before transhumanism was cool, but his name isn’t exactly household. Below is a pretty mild sample, but if you’re like, you know, into that sorta thing, jump through the link down there – but not at work or in front of grandma:

Thanks for viewing – if you’ve got a favorite Japanese or otherwise nationalitied artist who represents with the robot art, let us and other readers know down below.

• • •

Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.

Image Sources: Toshiaki Takayama at deviantART – Gundam Gallery at Concept Robots & Blog of DARWINFISH105 – Transformers Box Art at Botch the Crab – Hajime Sorayama’s Beleaguered Website (Google Image Search is better)

Fourteen years from now, when Japan’s magnetically levitated, approx. 300MPH/482KPH Chuō Shinkansen comes online, it’ll be among the world’s coolest people movers – maybe even top of the list. And the world’s most fantastic train should have equally fantastic train stations, yeah?

Maybe not.

While the existence of this train is old news, released just last week were Japan Railways’ design proposals for stations on the initial Tokyo to Nagoya route (with eventual extension to Osaka). Suffice it to say, as proposed these supertech trains would be stopping at stations with an aesthetic that aggressively bypasses any notion of post-modern minimalism and instead lands somewhere in the vicinity 1970s Soviet chic. They’re basically elevators, stairs, automated ticket counters, toilets, and tracks.

Those interested can see the plans here & here (PDF; Japanese only).

Train Stations are Not Just Train Stations (in Japan)
For one who’s never traveled here, this might not seem like such a big deal. Because it’s just a train station, for a very fast train at that, so who’s looking to linger? Well, the thing is, in Japan even medium-sized and smallish train stations can be the nuclei of entire neighborhoods or city wards, and they’re often social & economic ecosystems unto themselves; think variably sized multilevel shopping malls where trains happen to stop. This is particularly true in places like Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka where rail stations serve literally millions of passengers on a daily basis.

Japan Railways is calling the designs “modern” and “revolutionary,” but here in rapidly aging, often techno-contradictory Japan (yes, the rumors about ongoing fax machine usage are true), dispensing with the niceties and familiarities of strongly analog and strongly full-service rail travel culture might be too tall an order – the natives might revolt… which basically just means they’ll demand that their local municipalities cocoon the stations with restaurants, convenience stores, souvenir shops, coin lockers, and little out of the way cubbys with those stand-up irons to press your pants.

Remains to be seen, but we’ll keep you dialed in as things unfold.

Addendum on Nomenclature:
Oh, by the way, the ultra-utilitarian stations aren’t the only thing that could use a bit more thought: “Chuō Shinkansen” might sound exotic and Japanesey, but it really just means “Central Shinkansen.” And, though the name’s gained a domestic and international cache of high-tech coolness, “shinkansen” just means “new main line.”

Sure, a dead-sexy maglev bullet train is a concept that sells itself, but let’s hope that gets some polish. Because calling this thing the “Central Shinkansen” would be like naming the latest Ferrari “Red Car.”

• • •

Akihabara News Contributor Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com.

Via RocketNews 24 via IT Media (Japanese)