Posts Tagged ‘CEATEC’

CEATEC, the Combined Electronics and Technology exhibition in Makuhari, Japan is this week. The latest innovations from Japanese companies are showcased here, often many months before Americans get a taste. I’ll be posting a reporter’s notebook in a bit. For now, enjoy clicking through videos and photos of cool things found on the show floor!

Panasonic’s Cocotto Children’s Companion Robot

Bowing Vision Violin Improvement Sensors & App

Hitachi Robot for the Elderly, and those with Dimentia

Omron “Ping Pong” Robot, Now with “Smash” Shot Abilities

au’s AR Climbing Wall

Unisys’ Manufacturing Robot That Follows Lines

VR Racer

Takara Tomy Programmable Robot

Dry Ice Locomotion

Airline Customer Service Bot Attendant

Feel the Biker’s Heartbeat

Wind Sensors Paired with Fun Animations

The Trouble with Tribbles – Qoobo Robot

Spider-Like Robot from Bandai

Semi-Transparent Display with Water Effect

Bandai BN Bot

Model Train

Kunshan Plasma

The Many Faces of Robots at CEATEC

There were MANY robots at CEATEC. Many just sit there and answer basic questions. Still, some, like Omron’s Ping Pong robot, can learn and adapt and make a difference.

 

Want to see of the latest and greatest tech before it hits our shores? Then hit CEATEC, Japan’s largest consumer electronics trade show, held in Makuhari Messe every year in October.

Below are some of the highlights from the first day of the show. If you want to see all the videos I’m taking at CEATEC 2016, which cover many items I’m not writing about, take a look at my YouTube playlist.

Yukai BOCCO SIM Robot

Yukai showed their BOCCO SIM robot, designed to sit in the home and notify occupants of events. New this year is a sensor to detect a door locking and unlocking, so you know if someone left the home unprotected. Users can also leave messages for others when they arrive home. The robot cannot differentiate between user voices. The $240 product is available on Amazon and the $35 sensor should be coming soon.

YouTube Video

Honda 3D Printed Car

Honda showed off a 3D printed vehicle, using their Vehicle Design Platform. In tandem with cookie company Toshimaya, and design firm Kabuku, the shell of the battery-powered vehicle was 3D printed, and placed over the chassis provided by Honda. The shell is made from ABS plastic, and in the photos you can see the polished, finished surfaces versus those needing a final pass. Printing took 1 month, occurring 24×7, using a Stratosys Focus 900 printer, one of the largest in the industry. The vehicle utilizes a motorcycle-like pipe frame, has an 80 kilometer range, a large lithium ion battery, and a small cartridge battery for adding extra range 15 kilometers at a time.

Omron Table Tennis Robot – Now with Player Skill Recognition

Omron’s Table Tennis robot was a hit last year, beating its human challengers handily. This year, the system can detect a player’s skill and curb its own abilities when playing. We were also treated to watching the device break its arm, and the engineers had to come out and fix it. Omron’s solution has been recognized as the first robot table tennis tutor. Unexpectedly, it does not recognize different players, nor does it use deep learning, so it doesn’t get any better as it plays.

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NEC Police Officer Body Cam Video Analysis System

NEC showed off their Security Guard Support Solution, which works in tandem with vest-worn law enforcement cameras. The system can extract faces in the video feed and send them to an officer’s smartwatch for suspect identification, assisted by facial recognition. Accuracy detection rate is 90%. NEC also showed how it can compensate for low bandwidth or unpredictable network coverage with a blur compensation algorithm that appeared to greatly enhance the video playback quality and smoothness.

Rakuten ZapZap Word Cloud Shopping Assistant

Rakuten, the largest online retailer in Japan, again showed advanced customer assistance technologies at this year’s CEATEC. One, the ZapZap, enables a customer to place a book on an enhanced table, and see keywords from that book begin to hover around the cover. Tapping a word brings up a related passage from the book to ease browsing. The solution uses an RGBD camera, basically RGB plus Depth, to provide this service.

YouTube Video

Panasonic Bendable Battery Prototype

Panasonic showed off a prototype bendable lithium ion battery solution, capable of bending and not losing any power from the process. This package could enable batteries in watch straps, hats, and many wearables. The largest cell was 60 mAh. Samples will be available in October. You can see the bendability in the video below.

YouTube Video

Panasonic Listnr Baby Talk Recognition App

Japan faces an increasing number of two-working-parent households. Keeping track of a baby’s needs is more difficult when mommy and daddy aren’t home. Panasonic’s Listnr device listens to and recognizes a baby’s sounds and sends alerts to an app reporting whether baby is happy, sad, angry, and so forth. You can see the interface in the photos below. The system is already available on Amazon.

Hobot Window Washing Robot

Hobot showed off their latest window cleaning robot, the Model 198. Like their other units, the system must be plugged in to run. If disconnected from power, it can stay stuck to the window for up to 20 minutes before falling. However, it stops cleaning when that happens. Not sure of the point, but it was cool to see a window washing equivalent of the Roomba, even if it wasn’t nearly as well thought out.

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Epson PaperLab In-Office Paper Recycling Plant

Why send your paper out to be recycled when you could do it yourself? Epson’s PaperLab is about 9 feet wide, 6 feet high, and 5 feet deep and fits in a decently sized copier room. Feed it paper and it shreds it, removes all text, and within 3 minutes it will have recycled that paper. Once the system gets going – that 3 minute startup period – it can churn out 14 A4 size pages per minute. Choose the color of paper you’d like, its weight (thickness), and even add an optional scent, and voila – paper from paper. The system will be released in Japan this year. There is no water or waste, due to Epson’s proprietary Dry Fiber technology. Price unannounced, but it’s going to be “affordable” according to an Epson representative.

The recycling process is as follows:

  1. Insert Waste Paper
  2. Restore Paper to Fiber Form
  3. Use Binders to Bind Paper and Increase Strength and Whiteness
  4. Pressure Form the Paper, optionally mixing CMY to change color, and/or add scent
  5. New Paper is Ready

VoiceITT Speech Impediment Correction App

VoiceITT showed their TalkIT app for those with speech impediments. If you stutter, slur your speech, or have some other impediment, the solution clears up your speech in realtime so people can better understand you. VoiceITT is targeting those with autism, brain injuries, Parkinson’s, cerebral palsy, MS, strokes, ALS, and throat cancer, among others that affect a person’s normal ability to speak clearly. Quite fascinating in my opinion. The startup has already raised over $750K in funding. See the video below for an example.

YouTube Video

Blincam Camera for Eyewear

I often find myself wishing I could take a photo of whatever I’m seeing at the moment without whipping out my camera. Some cool bird, a funny shirt or license plate, anything – and the moment is right and easily missed if only a few seconds pass. ShapChat has their Spectacles product coming with a built-in camera to address such a need. However, if those loud, bright, and slightly cheap-looking, shades aren’t your thing, Blincam may be exactly what you’re looking for. The device attaches to practically any pair of eyewear, and takes a photo when it detects you’ve blinked. Resolution is only 1920×1080, but that’s good enough for an Instagram/Snapchat/Facebook upload.

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VRC’s Lightning Fast Full Body Scan 3D Model Generator

VRC showed off their CVS – Virtual Reality + Creative – 3D model scanner. The solution can take photos in 4 seconds of any 3D object, and within 2 minutes it will have a full 360 degree render of the subject. That’s 30x faster than existing systems, which take 1-2 hours to perform the same task.

Aroma Shooter Wearable Scent Transmitter

AromaJoin’s Aroma Shooter showed a scent transmitting wearable that can send quickly multiple scents in specific directions without switching cartridges. This overcomes a common issue with “scent” solutions – often they only contain one scent at a time, run slowly, and are relatively pointless. The AromaShooter solution is quick and directional, so it can send different scents to multiple surrounding recipients, with effectively no overlay. So, whatever it is you’re smelling, your neighbor wouldn’t. I can think of a few uses for that one!

The full size Aroma Shooter holds 7 cartridges and can switch in 0.1 seconds, the fastest of its kind. The Aroma Shooter Mini holds 1 cartridge, and can be placed on any metal surface due to its magnet. All products use Bluetooth LE. 200 scents are available so far.

AromaJoin will begin its Kickstarter campaign in May 2017.

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CEATEC is Japan’s largest consumer electronics trade show, and is similar to our state-side CES. Held in Makuhari every year, the show boasts over 100,000 attendees and hundreds of vendors, showcasing the latest technology in everything from fully manufactured consumer-ready products to the individual components necessary to build them.

As a judge on this year’s Innovation Awards, I had the opportunity to tour the show floor and get a first look at some amazing tech before the public stampedes the halls looking for the same.

Fujitsu’s Emotion Sensing Robot

Just look at the video… Skynet is coming.

ROHM “Machine Health” Solution

ROHM showed off a “Machine Health” factory equipment monitoring solution. The board, running the LAPIS processor at 920MHz, enables retrofitting of factory equipment with sensors. Data can be transmitted with enOcean, a common transmission solution, and Wi-Sun, among others. Once equipment has the board and sensors attached, the ROHM software brings all sensor data to a single front-end interface, altering factory personnel of any machine issues. This solution may save cost by not requiring new machine purchases for safer use monitoring, rather using new “IoT-like” technology and tacking it onto existing equipment.
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Next Generation Lazurite ORIZURU Flying Crane

RoHM introduced a new version of their ORIZURU flying origami. Running their 3.1g Lazurite processor, operating at 920MHz, the board solution is light enough to enable the device, including the battery. This year they added two additional wings, for a total of four, a tail motor, and a wrist-worn cuff to control flying. As you can see in the video below, the flight capabilities aren’t yet perfected.

ALPS IoT Smart Module Package

Alps showed the new version of their Next Generation Development Kit for IoT Smart Module package. After selling 1,400 units last year, they received useful feedback and this is the result. The solution is now expandable, supporting SDC, I/O, SPI, and I2C (“I Squared C”) modules. It also sports 4 megabytes of RAM, enabling logging of data for about one month when communication is bad, or the system doesn’t need to call home often. With a standard CR232 battery, the system can log data for up to 1 year between data dumps.

Murata Traffic Counter System

Murata showed off their Project Atlas traffic counting solution, blanketing a community’s traffic signals and road signage with IR sensors to monitor traffic flow. A prototype implementation has been running in Bangkok for 2 years now and has seen relative success. It takes one sensor every 500 meters to monitor 4 lanes of traffic. The system is not available for sale as of yet. When asked what challenges they face with IR to monitor the traffic, the most complex was noted to be heavy rain.

Fujitsu Palm Vein Verification

Fujitsu showed off its palm-vein-based payment solution. Users register their vein print and link it to any number of credit cards, point cards, and so forth. Veins are used due to the much larger set of verification data points. 17 million people are already using this system – ATM use in Brazil for example. The system uses near infrared to penetrate the skin, so skin color shouldn’t be an issue, according to the representative. Error rate is 0.000001%. Facial recognition wasn’t used due to glasses, weight changes, and contacts changing the verification pattern. While this solution has been available for a few years, Fujitsu’s new version of the senor, available this year, has more power, and can be placed in more environments, including automobiles.

Fujitsu Global Security Management and Hacking Demonstration

Fujitsu showed off a hacker doing a “real” attack – actually using a real hacking tool, Armitage – and explained how their security system could prevent this. See the video below for a replay of the actual attack against a Windows XP machine.

Fujitsu Laser Eyewear

Fujitsu’s laser eye projection solution projects a 720P image directly on the retina. The technology is intended for those with low sight capabilities.
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Fujitsu Ontenna

Fujitsu’s Ontenna – a play on the words “antenna” and “On” (own) the Japanese word for “sound” – uses a vibrating device placed in the hair to help those who are deaf or hearing impaired detect sounds. According to Fujitsu, our hair is very sensitive, so it’s the perfect medium to relay sound information. Users overwhelmingly wanted the hair solution versus any other sort of attachment. This was due to the device no longer touching the skin, and therefore not causing irritation. Using two in parallel can assist in distance and sound location detection.
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Fujitsu Smart City

Fujitsu’s citywide surveillance solution can visualize an entire city by monitoring vehicles, people, and objects in realtime. Advanced deep learning technology can detect suspicious activity, identify faces, read license plates, and more. It can also detect available parking spots using a single 1080P camera to track up to 100 spots.

Fujitsu LiveTalk Realtime Language Translation

Fujitsu’s natural language conversion solution can translate 12 different languages in realtime and seemed pretty accurate in our demo. See the video below for an example.

If you want to see next year’s consumer electronics trends, go the current year’s CEATEC. The largest CE show in Japan, held in Makuhari for at least the past 7 years, plays host to products and their components from all over the Asia Pacific area, where most of the CE industry innovation resides.

In a nutshell, based on what was observed at this show, I can practically put money on the items below being the CE Trends for 18 months. You can see many of these reflected in the winners of the CEATEC Innovation Awards, a panel on which I’m a judge.

  • 4K Television Sets + 8K, 3D is dead again and hey, why not buy a 4K set?
  • AR Headsets, likely trending towards VR – I’m thinking AR leads to head-mounted Android Wear, and, heaven forbid, iGlasses
  • Better device user experiences, totally non-techie

Over the next 3 years, probably the following:

  • “Simple” Robots transforming healthcare and family interaction
  • Family, home, and building monitoring solutions, healthcare
  • 5G wireless

The Under-appreciated Heroes of our Industry

I feel it’s harder to innovate full products these days. Many CE technologies we see in the pipeline are simply better, smaller, faster, higher resolution, more efficient versions of what’s come before. The real shining star of this industry is the component manufacturers and what they’ve been capable of. The second rarely told story is the countless research hours creating amazing solutions most American consumers will never hear of.