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Robot! Robot! Robot! Here are the newest and the best
PC World headed on over to Japan for CEATEC. Here’s a quick round-up of some of the cool and odd things we got to see and try. Expect robots. Of all sizes and persuasions!
There are also 3D-printed cars, Hydrogen-cell cars, LED finger nails and J-Pop vacuum cleaners. If that’s not enough we’ve a spice-selling robot, window-cleaning robot, Meccano robot and a translating phone robot. Lenovo’s smart mirror judges and measures you, and you can play the great, augmented reality game, Hado. All good!
First up are these things...
The other people we saw playing with these voice recognition robots on the show floor seemed to think that they were cute. We found them a bit sinister to be honest. -
You could even create your own robot J-pop group for just $12,500!
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Want to attract the attention of that cute boy over there? Why not don some LED false nails? They only light up using NFC though so you’d be best trying to attract his attention as you swipe your metro card. Or while tapping alluringly on the back of your phone.
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This is a 3D printed car by Honda and Kabuku. The axle and base of this electric car are regular, but the bodywork is a 3D printout. The opportunities to pay around and push the limits of design are pretty exciting. However the Japanese Department of Motor vehicles have yet to give it the green light, but the company hopes to have it on the road early next year.
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This robot will give in-store advice as to which spices you should purchase to make a specific dish. It will even suggest recipes for you as well.
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Hate washing windows? There’s a robot for that now!
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Meccano. Robot. Enough said. On second thoughts, we wish it was metal instead of plastic. But at least you get to build it yourself!
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It’s Japan. Of course the show was littered with robots. However we really liked this one as it managed to be a robot-tour guide-projector- phone! And it can send email and download apps as well as walking and dancing of course! Thank Sharp for the creation of RoBoHon. You can get the Japanese version at their website http://robohon.com or the English version from next year at a hefty $2,500+.
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Have you yet to realise your dream of owning a vacuuming robot? Why not wait till next year and you can get one that sings J-pop or K-pop as it cleans! The current model has 5 pre-loaded songs but Sharp plans to increase that (and the available types of music) in the future. They couldn’t give us a price on it, but say it will be cheaper than current models on the market.
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Lenovo’s porotype Think Mirror promises to walk you through your curls and let you know how many calories you’ve burnt. It seems like this showgirl was hoping to have burnt off a few more than the mirror told her. It also measures BMI and that kind of malarkey. It also tracks your weight losses and gains. However it’s early days they don’t expect to release anything until next year at the earliest.
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Who said electric cars have to be all boxy and practical. We’d love to take this flash one out for a spin.
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What show would be complete without a bit of gaming? We loved the Superhuman Sports Society’s augmented reality game ‘Hado’ which we had a go of. You don a phone based VR headset and sensor on your wrist. Then shoot fireballs at your opponents by flicking your wrists and put up a shield by swiping your arm upwards. It was great fun but we were also fascinated by their other products which included Oscar Pistorius-like sprung blade stilts and Zorb balls - the aim seeming to be to knock your opponents off their feet.
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Sick of paying through the teeth for tooth polishing at the dentist? Hate faffing with dental floss? The Cool Ssha can cut out the need. It’s a bit like a car wash brush system for your teeth. The brushes get right between your teeth eliminating the need to floss. The company says it’s was more effective than a normal electric toothbrush because the brushes simultaneously move left, right and downwards at a 45 degree angle to your teeth. The best bit? The three surfaces of your teeth are done at once so it should only take a third of the time to brush your teeth!
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The company says it’s was more effective than a normal electric toothbrush because the brushes simultaneously move left, right and downwards at a 45 degree angle to your teeth. The best bit? The three surfaces of your teeth are done at once so it should only take a third of the time to brush your teeth!
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Now here’s something that we hope tourism boards and product makers will go for. QR coded translation in seven languages. The company offers machine translation (cheap, but most likely not much good) and human translation. With the amount of time we’ve spent trying to decode food labels in Tokyo this month using Google Translate’s scan function we’d love to see this take off in a big way.
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It’s a show, so you’d expect cars. But we’re not used to seeing them sawn in half like this hydrogen powered offering from Honda the Mirai. Pretty cool looking.
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And let’s end on a robot - the biggest robot at CEATEC this year. This hunk of gorgeous arachnid-reminiscent machinery - Forpheus is a table tennis tutor. He earned himself a place in the Guinness Book of Records on that score last year. We got to play him and he most definitely beat us. He adjusts his skill level to match yours as you play so that’s some pretty complex robotics right there.
The best Japan Robot, gadget and car expo gallery
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CAETEC throws up some of Japan's weirdest wares.
