Japanese Robots (and more)

I was looking through My Yahoo news and found an interesting article about a robot that the japanese were developing called Twendy-One.

Twendy-One, named as a 21st century edition of a previous robot, Wendy, has soft hands and fingers that gently grip, enough strength to support humans as they sit up and stand, and supple movements that respond to human touch.

It can pick up a loaf of bread without crushing it, serve toast and help lift people out of bed.

The robot is a little shorter than an average Japanese woman at 1.5 m (5 ft), but heavy-set at 111 kg (245 lb). Its long arms and a face shaped like a giant squashed bean mean it resembles the alien movie character E.T.

Here is the website for Twendy-One. It is mostly in japanese, but has videos of Twendy-One performing various tasks.

So I went to YouTube to see if there were other videos of Twendy-One, or other robots. I found this video of a montage of Japanese robots.

And this video of the LandWalker Robot Suit:

And I love this one of Robots Fighting. It is so cute!

And here is a totally cool robot toy ROBOZAK RZ-1 that it looks like you can build yourself? Watch it’s amazing moves. For some reason it is not displaying in my post, but follow the link to view it in action.

Here is a video of and a link to the Humanoid Robot Project: Promet MK-II, very cool. The HRP-3 Promet Mk-II is a blue-collar android tough enough to trudge through heavy rains, carry out disaster relief operations and work in environments hazardous to humans. The robot was unveiled on June 21, 2006 at Kawada Industries headquarters in Tochigi prefecture, Japan, where it showed of its ability to operate power tools and walk on slippery surfaces.:

And last but not least, here is a picture (and the set of pictures) from our local ACPL Shawnee Library branch of their Sumo Robot building and testing from their teen robot program.

Pretty cool, huh?!

~Susan Mellott