The Saikyo Senritsu Meikyu ("Ultimate Horror Maze") -- a 900-meter-long zombie-infested labyrinth at Japan's Fuji-Q Highland amusement park -- is billed as the world's longest and scariest house of horror.
However, at a "press conference" staged last month, organizers announced they had temporarily shut down the facility because the zombie staff had lost their edge and were not frightening people enough. While the haunted house was closed, the undead employees were put through a rigorous training program designed to upgrade their zombie skills.
Here's some video showing the treatment they had to endure:
The body of the robot -- named "Robochan" -- consists of a Kondo KHR-2HV humanoid. The iPhone head, which attaches to the body via the dock connector, displays various facial expressions while functioning as the controller. Using Robochan's iPhone interface, the user can program it to function as an alarm clock, dance to music, and perform other moves based on user interaction.
Incidentally, Robochan's leek-spinning dance (and the infectious music) is a reference to the old Loituma Girl Internet meme, which began as a simple Flash animation showing a Bleach anime character (Orihime Inoue) twirling a leek to the traditional Finnish folk song "Ievan Polkka."
To demonstrate the latest advances in high-speed industrial robot technology, researchers at the University of Tokyo have pitted a baseball-pitching robotic arm against a mechanical batter with a near-perfect swing.
The robot pitcher consists of a high-speed, three-fingered hand (developed by professor Masatoshi Ishikawa and his team from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology) mounted on a mechanical arm (developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). With superb control of nimble fingers that can open and close at a rate of up to 10 times per second, the robot can release the ball with perfect timing. Precise coordination between the fingers, hand and arm allow the robot pitcher to hit the strike zone 90% of the time.
The robot batter is an upgraded version of a machine that Ishikawa's team developed in 2003.
In the demonstration -- which was designed to showcase the speed at which multiple high-speed industrial robots can respond to external circumstances and perform activities together -- the researchers placed the robot pitcher 3.5 meters (11 ft) away from the mechanical batter. The pitcher's 40-kph (25-mph) sidearm throws posed little challenge to the batter, whose 1000-frame-per-second camera eyes allow it to see the ball in super slow motion as it approaches. The robot batter has a near-perfect batting average when swinging at pitches in the strike zone.
To make future contests more interesting, the researchers plan to increase the robot pitcher's throwing speed to 150 kph (93 mph) and teach it to throw breaking balls and changeups. In addition, they plan to train the robot batter to repeatedly hit balls to the same target.
Japan's Himawari-7 (a.k.a. MTSAT-2) weather satellite has beamed back a series of images of Earth captured during the solar eclipse earlier today. Taken at 15-minute intervals from an altitude of 36,000 kilometers (22,400 miles), the satellite images show the dark shadow of the Moon racing east across Asia and into the Pacific.
Electromagnetism leaking through the floor of a Kobe train causes paperclips to dance. (Watch video.)
The video -- shot on the Rokko Liner in Kobe, Japan -- shows how paperclips on the floor react when the train accelerates and decelerates. The magnetic pull, which is produced by the electric current that drives the motors located under the floor, apparently poses no harm to the human body, though it could damage credit cards, mobile phones, or other electronic devices if left on the floor. The Kobe New Transit Company, which operates the Rokko Liner (as well as the Port Liner, which uses similar trains), says extra shielding is being installed for good measure.
And "Sailor-suited Fighter NANAMI-chan" (Satoshi Imai, 1988) kicks it up a notch with spectacular special effects and epic battles against Kuidaore Taro (Osaka's iconic clown mannequin) and a giant crab ship piloted by foreign invaders.
Spotted at the International Stationery and Office Products Fair, this eye-catching digital signage system consists of a 0.3-millimeter-thick high-luminance rear-projection film (Vikuiti Rear Projection Film developed by 3M) applied to a 3-millimeter-thick glass substrate cut into the shape of a woman. A rear projector beams video onto the film, whose microbead-arrayed surface produces a crisp, brilliant image viewable from any angle, even in brightly lit environments.
The Fiat Cinque Tank, a dream bulldozer custom-built by ironsmith Kogoro Kurata, consists of an old Fiat 500 body mounted on the caterpillar tracks of a cheap secondhand tractor. The farm machine can only reach a speed of 3 kilometers per hour, turning a trip to the nearest convenience store into a 2-hour adventure, according to Kurata. But the classic look of the cabin no doubt impresses the neighbors, and the working power shovel comes in handy when obstacles block the way.
See Kurata's site for photos documenting the construction process: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Tokyo-based photographer Samuel Cockedey presents more miraculous views of the Shinjuku cityscape in his latest time-lapse video (featuring minimal beats by Kusanagi).
