Comedian Bill Hicks once said, "Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a jet ski, and you never see an unhappy person riding a jet ski." Mr. Hicks, and most of those who have copied his quote since, never saw someone ride Kawasaki’s new 310-horsepower jet ski, the Ultra 310. The rider of this brutish machine may be having fun, but that person, particularly if he or she is a rookie personal water craft pilot, will also be terrified.
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Does Kawasaki’s new electric cycle have two, three wheels or four? Well, it depends. According to the conceptual sketches and a terse explanatory panel, the “J vehicle” concept EV can switch between a lie-down two-wheel Akira / Tron-baiting cycle and a four three-wheel drive mode, with the latter designated as “comfort” mode. The model, revealed at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show, is apparently powered by Kawasaki’s biggest onboard battery pack, the Gigacell, although (any other) details aren’t forthcoming. That’s probably because it’s from the future and is tearing the space-time continuum apart.
(Update: According to those aforementioned concept images, only the front wheels separate outward in comfort mode, turning it into a three-wheeled vehicle, not a quad-bike. We apologize for the error.)
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Filed under: Transportation
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the world’s first stainless steel robot with seven degrees of freedom. But before I explain what that means or why it matters, kindly take a moment to watch this Kawasaki Heavy Industries bot dance. Nice moves!
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Sweet, More J-Robots! …Oh. Industrial Robots?
Okay, today will not be heroic rescue & recovery robots, nor life-changing assistive robots for the disabled and elderly. No, today we’re talking Japan’s industrial robots, and through profound statistics, talk of money, and wildly general projections for the future, we’re going to spice up this dry robot salad.
Now, industrial robots are basically super-strong, super-precise, fantastically dexterous multi-jointed arms that do pretty much …
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