Researchers at the University of Tokyo have managed to teach a quadcopter some impressive new tricks that vastly expand its capabilities past flying. Their Multi-field Universal Wheel for Air-land Vehicle—or MUWA for short—features variable pitch propellers so the thrust can be directed in opposite directions, allowing it to balance on edge like an autonomous bike wheel.
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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.
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Via: University of Tokyo
Researchers at the University of Tokyo’s Ishikawa Oku Lab have been hard at work on a camera system that can track fast moving objects incredibly well, and the technology may change the way sports like baseball and soccer are televised. Recently, the team building the system has entered the next phase of testing: taking it outside, to see if will perform as well as it has in a lab setting. If all goes according to plan, they expect it’ll be ready for broadcast use in roughly two years.
Demos of the tech are pretty impressive, as you can see in the video below showing the (warning: not recommended watching for those easily prone to motion sickness). To get the ping-pong ball-centric shots, the system uses a group of lenses and two small mirrors that pan, tilt and move so the camera itself doesn’t have to. The mirrors rely on a speedy image tracking system that follows movement, rather than predicting it. Swapping the camera out for a projector also has some interesting applications — it can paint digital pictures on whatever its tracking. Sounds like the perfect gadget for folks who wish their table tennis balls looked like emoji.
Via: Diginfo
Source: Ishikawa Oku Laboratory
We recently wrote about a robot named Robi who is a member of the Japanese family.
Now, Dentsu Inc. has announced the names “Kirobo” and “Mirata” for two humanoid communication robots being developed under the KIBO ROBOT PROJECT, a joint research project being carried out in collaboration with the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, ROBO GARAGE Co., Ltd., and Toyota Motor Corporation.
This project is developing a friendly …
At the University of Tokyo, the Naemura Group is developing paper computing technology, which can automatically erase, copy and print hand-drawn sketches on paper.
As well as using a camera and computer, this system uses a laser and UV light, making it possible to work directly with the hand-drawn sketches using the computer.
So for example, the user can leave only the edges of hand-written characters, creating 3D like text, or draw a figure by hand and color it in automatically.
“This is …
Forget e-paper: if the University of Tokyo’s Naemura Lab has its way, we’ll interact with the real thing. The division’s new research has budding artists draw on photochromic paper with Frixion’s heat-sensitive ink, turning the results into something a computer can manipulate. A laser ‘erases’ the ink to fix mistakes or add effects, and an ultraviolet projector overhead can copy any handiwork, fill in the gaps or print a new creation. The prototype is neither high resolution nor quick — you won’t be living out fantasies of a real-world A-Ha music video — but the laser’s accuracy (down to 0.0001 inches) has already led researchers to dream of paper-based, Google Docs-style collaboration where edits in one place affect a tangible document somewhere else. It’s hard to see truly widespread adoption in an era where we’re often trying to save trees instead of print to them, but there’s an undeniable appeal to having a hard copy that isn’t fixed in time.
University of Tokyo turns real paper and ink into a display, could share doodles from a distance (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
There are waterfall screens, but what if you’d like your display to be a little more… pristine? Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a display that hits soap bubbles with ultrasonic sound to change the surface. At a minimum, it can change how light glances off the soap film to produce the image. It gets truly creative when taking advantage of the soap’s properties: a single screen is enough to alter the texture of a 2D image, and multiple screens in tandem can create what amounts to a slightly sticky hologram. As the soap is made out of sturdy colloids rather than the easily-burst mixture we all knew as kids, users won’t have to worry about an overly touch-happy colleague popping a business presentation. There’s a video preview of the technology after the jump; we’re promised a closer look at the technology during the SIGGRAPH expo in August, but we don’t yet know how many years it will take to find sudsy screens in the wild.
University of Tokyo builds a soap bubble 3D screen, guarantees your display stays squeaky clean (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Japan got itself in the good graces of many a Futurama fan after creating Bender’s ancestor. Then again, another Japanese robotic creation — one that specializes in rock, paper, scissors — may actually have more in common with the morally questionable, beer-guzzling bot. That’s because this sneaky little future overlord wins 100 percent of its matches by using an oh-so human trait known as cheating. See, the researchers at the University of Tokyo’s 4chan, er, Ishikawa Oku Laboratory programmed the “Janken” robot to recognize its human opponent’s hand shape and counter it within a millisecond. Adding to the troll factor is the fact that it was unwittingly named the “Human-Machine Cooperation System” because, well, it needs the cooperation of some poor human sap to work its magic. The achievement joins other man-versus-machine milestones, including losses by humans in chess and shogi. Of course, the question now is, what happens if you pit two “Janken” machines against each other?
Japanese robot trolls humans at rock-paper-scissors, sadly wasn’t named the UMADBRO 9000 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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