While walking around Akihabara in Tokyo, we stumbled across a robot competition.  This was totally unplanned on our part but it turned out to be a Kondo Robotics humanoid robot competition.  The small shop was packed but we captured this video of one of the matches from outside the shop.  This match resulted in one of the robots being thrown out of the ring by the other bot.

While visiting Tokyo, I spent some time in Akihabara where I stopped at the vStone Robot Store. I spotted a new balancing bot they had called the Beauto Balancer Duo (Reseller with English translation) and brought one home.  Two motors mount under the circuit board and use encoders.  The two AA batteries are mounted high up with spacers to raise the center of mass.  An optional radio control module (shown in the photo) mounts to [...]

While I was in Japan I was able to visit one of the leading science museums in Tokyo — the Miraikan. I recognized a few of the exhibits as things I’d seen described in blogs over the years — like the robotic floor tiles that move with you riding them so that as you step you really stay in place. The photo below shows a rather interesting simulation of internet routing. I was also surprised [...]

There is a wonderful museum which exhibits working automata of the Edo era in Japan.  It’s called Shishi Kaikan and it’s located in Takayama, Japan.  The automata are mechanical marvels.  A couple of these have been modeled by Gakken and are available as scaled down kits.  I’ve included videos of a few of the larger displays below.  I’m calling these “automata” but the Japanese word is Karakuri which is a sort of puppet meant to surprise [...]