Japanese Brands

The number of people into Blu-ray may still be small, and the number of people who care about whether their favorite movie uses the AVC or MPEG-2 video codec may be …

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The Marantz SR6003 is an upcoming receiver which features DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD decoding, 1080p upscaling and a new design.

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He stood overnight in line to get it when the device became available in Japan for the first time. But the 29-year-old computer engineer isn’t about to part with his made-in-Japan …

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Aim for united front to survive digital evolution Financial Times, UK -Aug 5, 2008 … would find some more prosaic cost benefits from combining Sony BMG, which will be renamed Sony Music Entertainment, with its Japanese music business. …

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A month after saying it had figured out how to squeeze 400GB of data onto a single optical disc, Pioneer says it can do better than that. On Tuesday the company …

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Filed under: Robots

Oh Pleo, it’s been far too long since we’ve seen you out and about! Thankfully, we’ve stumbled upon a handful of Pleo news all at once, so we hope you’re ready to catch up with your favorite dinosaur. First up is a pair of useful hacks from GRIP: a spy cam hack — which transmits images from the pet to a PC sans wires — and an XBee hack, which allows users to monitor Pleo’s sensors and control its servos in real time. For those looking for less work and more laughs, you’ll definitely want to venture on past the break. Wondering what’s there? Pleo visits the day spa — need we say more?

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Read - Pleo’s day spa adventures

Continue reading Pleo roundup: spy cam / XBee hacks, dino visits the day spa

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Filed under: Robots

The folks at the University of Tokyo have been trying to create more touchy, feely robots for what seems like ages, and they now look to have made some real progress with their so-called “e-skin,” which promises to give robots a more human-like sense of touch. To do that, the researchers created a bendable rubber sheet filled with carbon nanotubes, which lets the “skin” conduct electricity even when it’s stretched. When combined with sensors, that would let robots feel heat or pressure, which the researchers say is essential “as robots enter our everyday life.” They also, not surprisingly, see a whole host of other applications for the technology, including on steering wheels that could judge whether people are fit to drive and in stretchable displays that could start out as a tiny sheet and be stretched to a larger size when you want to watch TV.

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Filed under: Robots, Transportation

The UK’s National Oceanography Center in Southampton is prepping to launch a new autonomous underwater vehicle (also known as a robo-sub, landlubber) capable of exploring undersea volcanoes in the Cayman Trough up to 20,000 feet deep. It’ll only run for about a kilometer at a time though, so while it does have quickly replaceable lithium polymer battery packs, it still won’t exactly be roaming the briny deep for months on end without human supervision. And you know how we feel about unsupervised self-directing machines.

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Historically when thinking of Mitsubishi only two models really come to mind. The reliable workhorse that is the Shogun which although often seen on the school run is also the preferred choice for dis…

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Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. is supplying China with 25 LED Astrovision screens for the Beijing Olympics. Each of these giant screens comprises hundreds of LED units and offers three times higher …

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