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SOCIAL ROBOTICS JAPAN is adapted from a bimonthly column published in Japan’s Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun (日刊工業新聞/Business & Technology Daily Newspaper). The 101-year-old, nationally circulated newspaper is a co-organizer of the iREX International Robot Exhibition and its biennial alternate, Japan Robot Week. The column’s generalist, socio-technological perspective aims to encourage both domestic and international conversation around developments in Japanese robotics.
Astronauts: awesome, but only human
It’s cold out there beyond the blue. Full of radiation. Low on breathable air. Vacuous. It’s hard to keep machines and organic creatures functioning and/or alive. Space to-do lists are full of dangerous, fantastically boring, and super-precise stuff.
We technological mammals assess thusly:
“Robots. Robots should be doing this.“
New Japanese exoskeleton pushing into HAL’s (potential) marketshare
We of the robot/technology nerd demo are well aware of the non-ironically, ironically named HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) exoskeletal suit developed by Professor Yoshiyuki Sankai’s also totally not meta-ironically named Cyberdyne, Inc. Since its 2004 founding in Tsukuba City, just north of the Tokyo metro area, Cyberdyne has developed and iteratively refined the force-amplifying exoskeletal suit, and through the HAL FIT venture, they’ve also created a legs-only force resistance rehabilitation & training platform.
