Crave

(Credit: Solid Alliance)

The latest version of the Crazy Earphones are a follow-up to offbeat buds released earlier this year that seem to be sprouting bananas, bolts and sushi.

The new batch goes on sale in January for about $22 apiece. Each comes with small or medium-sized silicon ear caps, as well as a cell phone jack.

Solid Alliance boasts they are "even sillier" than the first Crazy Earphones.

(Via Crunch Gear)

(Credit: Nippon Institute of Technology)

Classrooms in Japan may soon welcome a new 4-foot-tall educational humanoid robot unveiled by Nippon Institute of Technology and other groups.

It will be used to teach software programming and hardware engineering to students, but will also be demonstrated in elementary schools and nursing homes. It will act as a "teacher" in class along with a human teacher.

As explained in Japanese in the video below, the kid-size bot doesn't have a name yet. With its boyish voice, the robot can be heard asking people to give it a "cool name." It then does some dancing and balancing on one leg.

But some details are available. It tips the scales at 33 pounds and has 21 degrees of mechanical freedom. It's equipped with sensing devices including a camera, accelerometers, and gyroscopes, and has a small projector in its head. It can be programmed with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.

The price tag is about $132,000, according to Robot Watch.

Its body was engineered by Tokyo robot firm ZMP, known for its small but stylish Nuvo bot. The underlying e-nuvo Humanoid platform is intended for education and research, and is priced around $77,000. The exterior was designed by Znug Design studio.

More photos at the Robot Watch page (in Japanese).

No word yet on how the robot will punish bad students.

"Please, Mommy, tell me this baby is going back to the hospital!"

(Credit: University of Tsukuba)

We've written about creepy robot children before, but none as lachrymose as Yotaro, an interactive baby-bot that actually sheds tears when tired.

"No Tommy, real babies don't come with electronic parts."

(Credit: University of Tsukuba)

Created in the Uchiyama Lab at Japan's University of Tsukuba, Yotaro is meant to be a baby simulator for teaching new parents and about-to-be-older-siblings the ways of babyhood. As crying is obviously a big part of infancy, warm water comes out of a small opening in the interactive screen that doubles as Yotaro's touch-sensitive face.

Yotaro, just a concept for now, is not a standalone robot, as a rather extensive set of devices must be attached for it to perform its baby-like functions.

The computer controlling Yotaro's changing facial expressions is external, the water that serves as the tired-baby tears is stored in a separate tank, and sensors direct Yotaro's "emotional" responses (tickling Yotaro's belly, for example, results in it wiggling its motorized legs under the blanket). A projector under the bed projects the appropriate countenance upward onto Yotaro's 2D face, while a speaker offers up the right baby sounds.

All that hardware kind of makes you long for the old-fashioned mannequin baby, doesn't it?

Thanks to designboom for bringing Yotaro to our attention and to my erai CNET colleague Takayuki Sakurai for translating the Japanese on the University of Tsukuba Web site. Now please excuse us while we go cry some very real adult tears.

(Credit: ATR)

A humanoid robot has been deployed to a supermarket in Japan to help senior shoppers with their grocery purchases.

The modified version of the Robovie II robot developed by Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, or ATR, is working as a temporary shopping assistant at Apita-Seikadai supermarket in Kyoto until March. It's another experiment to test the viability of advanced personal robots in everyday situations.

Robovie can wirelessly receive a list of items selected beforehand by the customer, carry the shopping basket, and make recommendations about what to buy.

In the video below, the robot slowly follows a 67-year-old woman around the supermarket, carrying her basket, as they are followed by reporters. Robovie keeps telling the lady that the fruit she puts in the basket looks delicious, to which she agrees. It then suggests lettuce for a salad.

ATR's Robovie series has been developed into several machines. Some have been used as crowd monitors to detect people who are lost, while others have been miniaturized as hobby robots.

Via Pink Tentacle

Guinness World Records has certified a Japanese researcher's camera as having the most lenses in the world at 158.

(Credit: Nagoya Institute of Technology)

Yojiro Ishino of the Nagoya Institute of Technology created the super camera with his students in August to photograph flames from many different angles to better understand their structure.

The research goal is to find more efficient ways of burning fuel for engines.

The camera images can be used to create realistic computer-generated graphics of the flames in 3D. Ishino created a lower-res camera with only 40 lenses in 2003.

His latest camera measures 1.5 feet in diameter and 2.8 inches tall. It took Ishino and his students about six months to assemble the 158 high-power lenses into four rows along a semicircle.

Each lens cost about 200 yen, or $2.24, and the team bought 800 lenses for the project. Guinness required that each of the 158 lenses in the camera was operational before certifying the machine.

Japanese robot maker Kokoro, best known for its Actroid line of ultra-lifelike androids, will make robot clones of people in a special limited-time offer.

Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro (right) and his android clone, Geminoid.

(Credit: Tim Hornyak)

The New Year promotion is being offered via select department stores in Japan. People willing to pay about $225,000 can have themselves recreated in robot form, with their robot clone having exactly the same face, hair, eyes, and body.

Kokoro will also model the buyer's voice, facial expressions, and upper-body movements to create the most lifelike doppelganger possible.

The Actroid and Geminoid androids are powered by a quiet air servo system that moves their upper bodies. They cannot walk.

Both are based on real people--one version of Actroid was based on a Japanese newscaster, and Geminoid is based on Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro.

Kokoro is only offering to make two robot clones. If more than two orders are received, the lucky buyers will be selected by lottery.

(Via Pink Tentacle)

(Credit: Video screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET)

Major Japanese toilet maker Toto has created a talking commode. The new Neo model has a robotic lid that moves in time with its voice, which for some reason is male.

Neo features in a series of short video ads for the Japanese market, apparently as a joke. The videos show Neo chatting with a man about everyday things like relationships and riding Japan Railways trains.

The company's Tototalk campaign promotes the Neo 2 prototype model, which is currently on display in the Caretta Shiodome mall in downtown Tokyo. Check it out in the video below.

Neo 2 is designed to provide every function imaginable, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Japan's highly engineered toilets. Neo 2's ridiculously long armrest features more than 10 buttons. They can make Neo 2 tell jokes, give the weather forecast, or display an outsize bum scrubber.

The same functions can be controlled via a real-time Web link and Webcam at the Tototalk Web site.

In one joke, Neo talks about the U.S. cities of Onalaska in Texas and Wisconsin. The name is pronounced "Onaraska" in Japanese, and "onara" means "fart."

In their endless quest to engineer toilets into high-tech electronic waste receptacles, Japanese manufacturers have produced Western-style toilets that have remote controls, bum spray and bidet functions, heated seats, and dozens of buttons to control the various functions. Public toilets for women often have a Toto function called Otohime, or "sound princess," which masks the sound of urination with an artificial flushing noise.

Toto was also behind such innovations as the Washlet bum shower, a function called "Tornado flushing" and the tankless toilet. Some have contributed to cutting water use.

Osaka, Japan-based Eager Co. is developing recyclable cardboard robots to work as mannequins that show off clothing in retail display spaces.

Eager showed off the female D+ropop mannequins at the recent 2009 International Robot Exhibition (iRex) here in Tokyo. They're billed as the world's most environmentally friendly robots because they're made of corrugated cardboard.

The mannequin bots only have a few servomotors but can still move their arms and heads gracefully. Each weighs about 13 pounds and is nearly 6 feet tall. They can also be painted and printed with logos for other advertising purposes.

The dummy bots will go on sale this month in Japan, priced at $5,400 and up. They can be rented for about $1,800 per week.

Eager envisions them being used in storefronts, and at events and other venues to attract attention. The company apparently aims to capture 1 percent of the global retail mannequin market, not easy for an obscure start-up in this economy.

But who knows? If Old Navy can cause a stir with its SuperModelquin mannequins, there's hope for the D+ropop gals.

Researchers in Japan are developing robotic roller skates as a new form of personal mobility.

(Credit: Tim Hornyak)

Toshinobu Takei of Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) demonstrated his "Unit-type Micro-Mobility" device at the 2009 International Robot Exhibition (iRex) in Tokyo this week.

We haven't seen too many gadgets like these, but what with the plethora of prototype personal vehicles like Honda's U3-X unicycle in Japan lately, they aren't surprising.

The prototype skates are actually mechatronic versions of "takeuma," which are old-school bamboo stilts that kids used to play with in Japan before their lives were consumed by cell phones and video games.

The aluminum skates move automatically when the user leans forward, but the attached poles must also be grasped. Users can roll or step forward with them.

Each skate contains a wheel, three accelerometers, and gyroscopes, and weighs about 11 pounds, according to Takei, part of AIST's Field Robotics Research Group.

Top speed is about 2.5 mph.

Takei said the skates are still in development, but added they are less bulky than a Segway.

Could they spark a new roller disco boom? Everyone would dance The Robot, of course.