I was tweeting on how I hope that robotic research will now see a push into emergency and rescue-ready “mobile suits,” instead of the glorified house servants we tend to see (which I realize have their use, in aiding the ederly). Then my friend Kat replied with the image above. Yes, exactly, imagine what one of those could have achieved during this past week’s disasters.
Mar 21, 2011
HENGE is certainly an intriguing item: it’s a “transformable interior object,” or model if you will, that goes from an aircraft-like mode to full robot. It’s self-produced by Tomoo Yamaji, who lives in Takarazuka (Hyogo prefecture), and he’s selling the limited edition model through his online shop. Below, a video of the transformation process.
Dec 22, 2009
Time to get your robot groove on, thanks to Vstone’s new Robovie-Nano, the company’s new entry-level humanoid robots. Designboom posts a few more details and photos, including a video of the Robovie-Nano in action.
Sep 23, 2009
PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens June 4.
We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.
Jean Snow is a contributor to Arcade Mania, your guide to the arcade gaming scene in Japan (Amazon US/Amazon Japan). He also provided assistance on Tokyolife: Art and Design, a guide to Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives.
He will be contributing to the upcoming fifth editions of The Rough Guide to Tokyo and The Rough Guide to Japan, due for release in 2011.
Jean Snow is Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization. He also helps run the PechaKucha Night in Tokyo -- please get in touch if you are interested in presenting at a future event. For a more intimate salon-like discussion group, join him at his monthly PauseTalk event.
A longtime resident of Tokyo, he lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming, sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for various online/offline publications, including the following: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 1UP, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Wired's Game|Life, PingMag, CNNGo, Phaidon, and The Japan Times.
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook, or get in touch by email.
