Robots from the University of Tokyo's IRT Lab

The IRT lab at the University of Tokyo has a great selection of robots designed to help older humans with their everyday life.

Hopefully when I am old, I will be able to afford my own personal robomaid.

The press release is conveniently available in English.




Unfortunately, the press release for the dish cleaning robot has not yet been translated. Fortunately however, the pictures are pretty clear showing the development of 3-axis MEMS touch sensors which allow the robot to not only determine how much force is being applied to the dish, but also to be able to determine the frictional shear forces on the dish so as to determine if the dish is slipping. There are also some photos showing examples of the computer vision system used for dish identification.