weirdmachines

Another step to become a Cyborg has been introduced by the Japanese company Honda this week. The system helps people walking or crouching by taking away some of the stress from the muscles. It is still in the prototype phase but should soon come on the market in Japan. It is targeted at elderly people or workers with a job that involves a lot of walking or crouching (e.g. in a factory).

And here is the video, how to walk like Asimo, …weird…fits this blog then.

Cool hack, but maybe it would be more fun as a multiplayer game.

Rumours say that Sony will come out with a new version of the Aibo robot dog. The robot comes together with Sony’s Playstation 3, and will be a real-world extension of a virtual avatar that can be steered and controlled with the Playstation. I don’t think this is completely implausible, since connecting virtual and real world was the key to the success of Nintendo’s Wii. However, steering the new Aibo with a standard Playstation controller cross might not be that fun.

The rumour has been spread in the latest edition of the Stuff Magazine.

Most people are familiar with the -science fiction- idea of emotionally expressive robots. The best example is probably Marvin, the depressed robot from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide through the Galaxy. Having emotionally expressive computers or other emotionally expressive every-day devices is a new idea.
RoCo, the world’s first expressive computer invented by Cynthia Breazeal and Rosalind Picard, has a monitor for a head and a simple LCD screen for a face. The screen has two degrees of freedom and a camera to observe the user. A film of RoCo in action can be found here.
It is, however, not sufficient to show just any emotion. The device has to be adaptive to the user’s mood and needs. A depressive computer can make the most enthusiastic person unmotivated, and an always happy computer (best negative example: Microsoft’s little helper) makes you even angrier if you already are.