Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Japan - day 4 (last day of conference...)

Firstly let me apologise for the late post, it has been over a month since I left japan and I haven't posted the final days, for that I am sorry. For that and the fact that some stuff I will forget to say. Nevertheless I will try.
So for the last day in Gifu, another conference day, plus the conference dinner, some shopping and a few curiosities.
So the conference was nothing special, but during the day I found out about this...



Good that I could find a video, since I wasn't able to go to that event because it was on Saturday. However I need to share this with you, a bird that catches the fish, how cool is that? Cormorant Fishing on the Nagara River (ぎふ長良川の鵜飼 Gifu Nagaragawa no Ukai?) has played a vital role in the history of the city of Gifu, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. Throughout its long history, it evolved from a means to live, to a profitable industry, to a major tourist draw. It runs from May 11 to October 15 of each year (except when the river level is high and during the Harvest Moon). for more on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormorant_Fishing_on_the_Nagara_River

Moving on so after the proceedings there was a toyota automation special event where I got to see this live, check it out:(since my videos came out dark here youtube :P)



Same song and everything :P. Cool isn't it, they have a full band, and are working on a robot to play the violin. I could talk about the future and how it looks from the roadmap of toyota, but let me just say, science fiction is coming :P

Last but not least the conference dinner, it was great, nice venue, OK food(that wasn't the best, from UK standards it was brilliant but still :P), nice people, nice traditional puppet show. That reminds...

So you might not know this, but Japanese researchers in the field of robots are mostly on the humanoid robots, most of their papers, and they are considered to be in the vanguard of such systems. Well from looking at the puppet show I think they are obsessed with it for hundred of years. Each puppet need like 4-5 people to operate it, really complicated control if you know what I mean ;P

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