What's Happenin' In Japan

Sony's Dancing Music Player "Rolly"

2007-09-10

posted by Marc

Sony has just started a buzz-generating campaign for a product that appears to be the mutant spawn of a Walkman and an Aibo (Sony's now-discontinued robot dog).

The palm-sized, pill-shaped Rolly is a portable music device that will "dance" to the tunes it's playing by flapping little round "arms" on its ends, rolling to and fro, and flashing various colored lights.

The device measures 6.5cm (2.5") in diameter, 10.4cm (4") long, weighs in at about 300g (2/3 lb) and contains 1GB of flash memory, a battery, hardware to analyze the tunes so it can dance along with them, and the motors to make it go. Music-wise, there's a speaker on each end under the moving wings, and it will play MP3, ATRAC, and AAC (!) files. Data is transferred to it via built-in Bluetooth wireless.

Interestingly, it has no display, but Sony claims the interface is intuitive with a minimum of buttons. When it's on a table, volume is adjusted by rotating it around in a circle. Alternately, if you hold it in one hand, it will only use the top speaker; twisting the top ring will switch songs, while the bottom ring will adjust volume.

Sony is apparently aiming for some of the same hobbyist crowd as the Aibo--its dance moves can be left to the device, automatically generated by their software running on a PC, or the user can manually program dance moves. There will, of course, be an online place for owners to share their dance programs.

It's scheduled to go on sale in Japan on the 29th of this month for around 40,000 yen (about US$350). How many people will be willing to pay that much for a lively little pill remains to be seen, but I don't get the feeling it'll be outselling any iPods this holiday season. Then again, the Japanese have been known to go wild over some pretty wacky products, so who knows.

Their initial promo video:

Labels: technology, weird products

Sony's Sweet New Battery

2007-08-25

posted by Akemi

Sony just announced an interesting development: An advanced form of the classic potato-powered battery. These "bio-battery" cells can essentially convert sugars into useable electricity. It's still a long way from recharging your iPod by adding some soda, but Sony did demonstrate running a fan from a splash of sports drink, and one of their portable music players from cells filled with grape juice.

TBS News (J) has a short video of the two demos, or there's a much longer version on YouTube, if you prefer.

The story's all over the international media; here's a Reuters link to read a bit more, if you're interested.

Labels: technology

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Robotic Taiko Drum Team Competes In Festival

2007-07-26

posted by Akemi

Asashi.com (J) and TBS News (J) are reporting on a historic festival that for the first time included a group of robots, and Robot Watch (J) has the pictures.

Kitakyuushuu City, located on the southernmost of Japan's four main islands in Fukuoka prefecture, has for the past 400 years celebrated the Kokura Gion Daiko festival. For the past 60 years this has included a parade of floats bearing teams Taiko drummers competing against each other. Until this year, though, there has never been any non-human competitors.

Yasukawa Electric, a company based in Kitakyuushuu City that builds industrial robots, celebrated the 60th anniversary of the competition by entering a team of drumming robots. So, a team of programmers set about giving these industrial arms some rhythm.

Each of the robot arms has seven joints, so they can move in the same way as a human arm. Actually getting them to play properly, however, was quite a challenge--playing Taiko drums is more than just banging away with a stick. To better understand the motions involved, the programmers started out by taking drumming lessons themselves, which was hard enough.

In the end, it took four months, but they managed to pull off the feat. So, in the parade, one of the floats had a team of three robots (four if you count the two arms separately, as the company does). One robot and a pair of independent arms sprouting from the platform played the drum, and a fourth handled cymbals. The robots were, of course, dressed in traditional robes, and the two usually headless robots with bodies even got styrofoam faces for the crowd.

According to Asashi Shimbun, one of the programmers went on record as calling it a "huge success." The judges were impressed by the effort as well.

If you want to see for yourself, check out Robot Watch's page (Japanese, but lots of photos and several high-rez video clips), and TBS News' report (also Japanese, but the video speaks for itself).

Labels: festivals, robots, technology

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