The BFS-Auto from The University of Tokyo, digitizes books in high-definition format at around 250 pages per minute. Photo courtesy of Wordless Tech.
All the cool robots come from this Tokyo laboratory
Published: 11/30/2012 1:00 PM
Last Modified: 11/30/2012 1:59 PM
It's becoming no secret that there are several of us here who appreciate the technology involved in robotics. Whether it's a smartphone-controlled helicopter or humorously welcoming the inevitability of Skynet, nobody can ignore the important role that advanced robotic technology has played in modern society. These days though, it appears more of the cooler robots are coming from a single laboratory in Tokyo.
The BFS-Auto
The Ishikawa Oku Lab, part of The University of Tokyo, has recently published two very different robots that have some very interesting similarities. The first is the BFS Auto, a book-digitizing robot that "can achieve high-speed and high-definition book digitization at over 250 pages (per minute)," according to the Lab's YouTube Channel. Using a combination of real-time 3D page flipping recognition and high-resolution scanning, this robot is able to restore a page from a book to a flat image in very little time. It scans the page at only the optimal moment, resulting in the best possible picture. You just have to see it for yourself:
The "Janken" Master
The other robot that caught my eye is not nearly as useful, but served as a good predecessor to the one mentioned above, and is actually pretty awesome in it's own right. It too relies on a high-speed camera, but for a completely different reason. this robot will beat you at the classic rock-paper-scissors (called "Janken" in Japan) 100% percent of the time. Touted as a solid example of "human-machine cooperation systems", it's easy to imagine how this technology could come in...um, handy in other ways. (Pun absolutely intended.) I'm personally interested in seeing how it would fare in a round of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock.
Written by
Micah Choquette
Scene Writer
