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In case you haven’t heard, we are crazy about Japan. We lived there for three glorious years when Audrey and Spencer were little, we have hosted an exchange student from Japan, we keep in touch with ‘our’ Japanese family we adopted while we lived there, and Audrey is hoping to go there for the month of August to stay with our Japanese family. So, when we heard they were having a festival at the Kennedy Center, we had to check it out. Make this cool paper toy! |
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Asimo Running |
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Asimo Stairs & Running |
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Asimo Agility |
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Asimo Dancing |
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Robot Dog Dancing |
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We started our day with a lecture from two top Japanese robotic inventors. The first was Tomotaka Takahashi. He was a great speaker, and developed his robots himself from start to finish. The funny thing to us was, he created the body with wood, a stover burner, and a vacuum cleaner to make the plastic molds for the robots bodies. That was amazing. He spoke of the difficulties in making a robot that can actually walk. His first robot was called Chroino. He also created a female robot called FT who he made walk like a fashion model (watch the video). He said it was very difficult to create the female robot because her balance was so hard to manage. He has also won the robo-cup championships 4 years in a row! |
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You Tube Robo-cup between Japan and Germany |
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Our second speaker was the inventor of Paro, a theroputic robot, which reminded me of those “Fur Real Friends”—but in Japan this one is used for people with disabilities, and people treat them as pets! Paro is meant to look like a Harbour Seal because they are pleasing to the eye, and comfortable to hold. I do have to say, Paro was cute, and he was much more cuddly than those “Fur Real Friends.” Of course, my girls made sure they bullied their way up front to hold Paro! |
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After Paro, we saw a few other robots, and then it was time for a demonstration for Asimo, the life sized robot from Honda. He was pretty amazing to see in action. It seems like there must be a humon in that body somehow. I took some video so you can see how he moves—it was amazing! |
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While it was hard to top the impressiveness of Asimo, I thought these little ladies made by Mitsubishi (Wakamaru) were cute! They responded to all kinds of commands based on the instruction sheet. Afterwards, Audrey and Malena made their way to the robot dog. He was pretty cute, and you could show him cards and he would perform the trick on the card. Pretty neat! |
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After we finished with the robots we made our way through some of the art installations. The artist who made the dots logo at the top had two installations of polka dot overload! I loved them. So did the kids. But, perhaps my favorite things were the room of Japanese windsocks that we hung from the ceiling. These were so beautiful, and reminded me of Childrens day in Japan. |
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Click HERE to see how Asimo works |
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Aren’t these awesome? I want a room of them in my house!! |
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Owl proof digital koi and an artist working on Manga comics rounded out our awesome day. Cade got a fever, so we had to cut it short, sadly. |
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One room represents day, the other night...can you guess which ones?
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