Hasta La Gadget!

Smart cars, smart homes, smartphones, everything seems to be getting a brain these days while humanity begins their long journey in being dumbed down. Well, Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has something interesting up their sleeves, which would come in the form of a stick-on film which is capable of transforming glass into a smart window, which will also do its bit in reducing the air conditioning load through the reflection of sunlight.

If you have flown on the grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliner before, you would have found its electrochromic dimming system useful, as passengers at the window seat are able to make windows on the aircraft more or less opaque with but a single touch of a button, taking around half a minute to change. Japan’s AIST claims that their new stick-on window film is capable of transforming from reflective to see-through in a mere 5 seconds, now how about that? This switchable mirror device will change its state whenever a low voltage is applied. Smart windows in cars, now this is what we’re talking about where the future is concerned.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google Stock Hits A Record Closing Above $800, Twitter Helping Direct Marketing Lead Generation,

This chocolate sculpture of Bruce Willis was made for a press conference in Japan for the release of A Good Day To Die Hard. It looks even more like Bruce Willis than Joseph Gordon-Levitt did in Looper. It’s a good day to bite hard on this delicious sculpture.

Only the Japanese could take a pointless movie sequel and use it as a good excuse to make a life-sized chocolate treat. Who else is going to do it? No one! Thank you, kind people of Japan.

Come out to Japan… Check your own likeness in chocolate… Have a few bites. Little did John McClane know that Japanese terrorists had turned the heat up in the building, threatening to melt the sculpture unless they got 640 million dollars in bearer bonds.

[via Kotaku via GeekTyrant]

We’ve already seen how the fashion industry can make use of robotics to make life easier for shoppers. But a Japanese clothing chain called United Arrows also found a way to use robots to make things more fun for window shoppers. The company installed a robotic mannequin in one of their stores that mimicked the movements of the person in front of it.

The mimicking mannequin is called MarionetteBot. It uses a Kinect to capture and help analyze the movements of a person. A motor moves a total of 16 wires to match the mannequin’s pose. MarionetteBot isn’t fast or limber enough to perfectly mimic the moves of a person, but it still proved to be a hit.

How come no one thought of doing the robot dance?

[via Akihabaranews]

Dear Uncle Toshiba. Thank you so much for announcing this REGZA Tablet AT501, the followup to the AT500. We noticed that you’d thrown in a 10.1-inch, 1,280 x 800 IPS display alongside a 1.3GHz Tegra 3 system and 1GB of RAM, which is very nice. We also like the feature that lets it act as a companion to compatible REGZA TVs. It was a bit sad, however, to see that it only came with a 3-megapixel rear facing camera. On the upside, you did manage to install Android 4.1, Splashtop and a battery that’s rated for 10 hours — which is probably why it weighs 625 grams. Unfortunately, you priced it at 40,000 yen ($425), more than a Nexus 10 — so if you don’t mind, can we keep the receipt?

Filed under: Tablets

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Via: Engadget Japanese (Translated)

Source: Toshiba (Translated)

While climbing mountains and helping disabled tourists are fine pursuits, Cyberdyne’s HAL robot suit has found an even nobler occupation: helping patients rehabilitate from debilitating nerve and muscle illnesses. According to The Asahi Shimbun, ten hospitals in Japan will start the first clinical trials of the lower-body suit version we saw last year, designed expressly for use by health care professionals. It works by detecting weak bio-electrical signals from patients’ muscles which drive small motors and power units, and will be tested on 30 adults to see if it can help them re-learn to walk. Cyberdyne’s wares will be trialed in European hospitals too — which would be a lot of good service for a company with such an evil moniker.

Filed under: Robots, Alt

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Source: Asahi Shimbun