Robot museum, dep't store to open in Oct.

A robot museum and robot department store are set to open in Nagoya in October, according to robot magazine publisher GyroWalk, one of the operators. The museum, Japan's first dedicated to robots, will be in the city's bustling Sakae area and will have four zones: an exhibition space called Robothink that will have new and old robots in educational, interactive displays, a "Robot Future Department Store," a shop area, and a restaurant area.

Osaka-based GyroWalk, which also operates retailer Robo Cafe, expects some 400,000 visitors a year at the Robot Museum in Nagoya. It says the venture is aimed at "the experience and fun of living with robots." That was a recurring theme at the insanely popular 2005 Aichi Expo, which was held outside Nagoya and drew 22 million. The city was chosen as a location for the museum because of the robot fervor generated by the expo as well as its history of prowess in manufacturing and craftsmanship. No word yet on whether any of the region's famed karakuri ningyo wooden automatons, featured prominently in Loving the Machine, will be included.

Machine dog, arm ascend to robot heaven

The ranks of robot immortals have grown! Yea, Carnegie Mellon University hath finally announced another fresh batch of synthetic deities for its Robot Hall of Fame and two of them hail from the Land of the Rising Robot: decommissioned Sony hund Aibo (passim) and the good ol' Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (ahem, SCARA), created by Yamanashi University engineering professor Hiroshi Makino in the late 1970s.

Aibo, launched two decades later, was the most sophisticated and one of the most successful mass-marketed robots ever. Though it won hearts and minds around the world with its incredible lifelike behavior and the ability to develop a "personality," Sony put it down earlier this year along with magnesium wonderdroid Qrio. Now that Sony's corporate fortunes seem to be on the mend, one wonders whether it will reverse that unfortunate decision. Meanwhile, Aibos reprogrammed for speed continue to blow minds at RoboCup soccer tournaments.

SCARA, short on personality but long on efficiency, was inspired by a Japanese byoubu folding screen. With its high-speed four-axis movement and simple, non-anthropomorphic design, it massively boosted productivity in the electronics manufacturing industry. The multi-jointed design was exported around the world and is still in use in products like the Motoman HM series. Chances are a SCARA bot put together many of the parts in your car and cellphone. Probably your Aibo too.

Japanese foot-bots outperform nat'l team

While Japan's national team battled Croatia in a frustrating scoreless match yesterday in Nuremburg, their second disappointing showing at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the footballers' silicon counterparts fared far better.

With the Samurai Blue squad's chances of advancing to the knockout stage all but gone, Team Osaka's new humanoid soccer robots Vision Tryz were mopping up the competition in Bremen. According to RoboCup 2006 results, Vision again proved the best humanoid footballer in the tournament, which drew 440 teams from 36 countries. The dusky dribblers from Kansai downed German rivals Team NimbRo of the University of Freiburg 9-5 in the two-on-two final.

I humbly suggest the entire Japan squad be replaced by Visions for the match against Brazil in Dortmund on June 22. If not, the Boys in Blue will have to rely on a miracle.

A walking Gundam model kit

Japan is full of plastic model kits based on the giant spacefaring robots in the incredibly popular Mobile Suit Gundam anime series. Major toymaker Bandai has made over five hundred different kinds of ganpura models since the early 1980s, but they're all just polystyrene assemblages and can't move. The latest robot creation by the government-backed National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), though, seems like a Gundam collectible that's come to life.

The HRP-2m Choromet is 35 cm tall, weighs 1.5 kg and has 20 degrees of mechanical freedom. A product of the AIST Intelligent Systems Research Institute and four venture firms, Choromet is a miniature version of the 154-cm HRP-2 Promet humanoid robot and was also developed for research and education purposes. Like its full-sized sibling, Choromet's appearance was designed by Gundam and Patlabor mechanical designer Yutaka Izubuchi. Choromet, which runs on an AIST-developed Linux application, can get up from a prone position and stand on one leg. See the video here.

"They are perfect as teaching material to study humanoid robot control methods, and I want them to be used in places such as university laboratories," Hirohisa Hirukawa, scientific leader of the AIST Humanoid Research Group, was quoted as saying by Mainichi Daily News.

Choromet is to go on sale this fall for half a million yen each, much less than the 8 million yen annual rental fee for Promet. I wonder how many Gundam fanatics will add Choromet, the ultimate ganpura, to their collections.

Team Osaka unveils new footballer

RoboCup champions Team Osaka have taken the wraps off their latest soccer-playing robot, Vision Tryz ahead of this month's RoboCup 2006 in Bremen, Germany. The 50-cm humanoid is the latest addition to the winsome Vision series, which won the past two RoboCup humanoid league tournaments.

At a press conference this week in Osaka, Vision Tryz told reporters in Japanese: "I'll do my best while aiming for successive championships." The artificial athlete will use its omnidirectional headcam, and 25% better image processing, to spot the ball. Added leg joint motors should help it deke out defenders on the pitch and boost its shooting abilities. We'll see whether Vision continues to prove a robot Ronaldinho.

Check out this video of Japanese kids going nuts as two Visions go head to head.

Work safe with your next-gen bot

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is putting together safety guidelines for robots that will work in fields like nursing, cleaning and security. They call for soft robot bodies and emergency shutoff functions to prevent harm to stray humans. Legal liability in robot accidents is also being considered. The guidelines should be complete by the end of this year.

Floor-cleaning robots like the Subaru RFS series made by Fuji Heavy Industries are already on the job in high-rise office towers in Japan. But they only deploy at night, when no one is around. They take the elevator from their daytime storage space and quietly work the corridors in the dark, automatically following their internal maps of the building. Then they ride the elevator again and go back to sleep in their room.

An outdoor version of these, the Subaru Robohiter RS1, was deployed at the 2005 Aichi Expo. An all-weather, rain- and dust-resistant drone, the RS1 has a GPS antenna and triangulation sensor to determine its location as well as a bumper and obstacle sensor to steer clear of objects. The robots working at the Expo could sweep an area of 3,600 square meters per hour along the elevated Global Loop. But it was more fun to watch the kids lining up and posing next to them for photos.