Just a few scenes from last month’s Make: Tokyo Meeting 06. I’m still in awe of the ingenuity of the exhibits, being that a lot of them are from people who are only hobbyists.
Make Magazine is a DIY (Do it yourself) and DIWO (Do it with others) publication that caters to creative people who love experimenting with electronics, computers, robots and craft in their free time. What better place than Japan bring this party? Originally from the US, Make has been in Japan for a while now and is …

Japan’s creative hobbyists were out in there numbers this month for MAKE Tokyo Meeting number 6. There were works from both the fields of technology and art. The exhibitions were generally impressive, here some of the cute and funny ones.
The remote controlled bunny ears were the cutest thing there. It’s a pair of animated rabbit ears that you wear. You can control the movement of the ears with a remote controller in the form of a ball (also dressed up as a bunny). The ball has a tilt sensor so …

When Ryo started his diet, he got really bored with measuring his progress and keeping motivated. So he did what any good geek would do; use a video game to help him out, and thus the “Final Fantasy V Diet Chair” was created.
It’s simple, Ryo sets a goal and measures his weight everyday, his progress with is diet is shown as progress in a Final Fantasy V video. For this he uses a Wii balance board hooked up to his PC and a custom Google Chrome add on. Here’s …

Robot de SaBaGe (Robot Survival Game) is a group of hobbyists who build robots that shoot the crap outta each other. Each of their robots has an airsoft gun attached to it. They’re put in an a field with obstacles where they battle it out. Here’s some footage from MAKE Tokyo 06.

The games come in to two forms, team matches , where small groups of robots use strategy to crush the enemy, or battle royales where it’s every bot for himself. A robot is out of the game when it’s …

iProject25 is 25 iPads synced together to form a huge interactive display. This was one of the most eye-catching and imaginative installations at this year’s Tokyo Designers Week.

So why 25 iPads? The design was commissioned by the Environmental Ministry of Japan as was a part of their “Challenge 25″ event to mark 25th anniversary of Tokyo Designers week, fitting isn’t it?. They wanted art that brought awareness to various global environmental problems. And they got this …

The creators, given their musical backgrounds, designed iProject25 with inspiration from the art of …

This bike operated image gallery is not for the lazy. You have to pedal your way through the pictures.

Projectors were placed on the ceiling at each side of the wall. The speed at which the viewer cycled directly affected the scroll speed of the pictures. The imagines were courtesy of Pixiv who enlisted the help of the interactive design company Team Lab to design this eye-catching display.
What’s not like about this installation? You can enjoy art while burning calories.

A dark shipping container that actually turns out to be an intercontinental and inter-dimensional train. This was the University of Tokyo’s virtual reality installation at Tokyo Designers Week 2010.

The inside of the shipping container was designed to look like a train car. The windows were actually ten displays showing train travel scenery from countries all over the world. This setup was done by using ten PCs connected by a server. They controlled the ten different window displays; five for each side. The image shown through the windows on one side …

From designer sugiX comes “The visualization art of the breeze”

This piece aims to represent the movement of air with balloons that are illuminated when caught in an air current. The balloons seem to filled with helium or some lighter than air gas (no explanation was given “design secret”) When they are still, no light is emitted. When in motion they glow blue. The intensity of the light emitted depends on the strength of the breeze.

For this display at Tokyo Designers Week, the audience was led into a dark room. There …

Today is ASIMO’s birthday and as a part of the 5 day celebration, Honda presented what was probably the world’s first human vs robot dance battle.

For a better angle check out Moriyama’s video.
ASIMO went up against the Comedian Papaya Suzuki. I’m not gonna say who I thought won, that’s up you.
This was a part of the first of three presentations today. These included a talk from ASIMO’s creator, and a demonstration of ASIMO’s potential use as a companion, servant and host. ASIMO demonstrated how he was able to …

“I want you to make Astro Boy—you know, the comic book robot.”
“What?” said Hirose, not believing his ears. Honda was going to make a robot?
ASIMO is the beloved crowned prince of humanoid robots. It’s been 10 years since he first made his debut to the world, gaining a fanboys and girls internationally and inspiring a new generation of robot makers. Honda is making a big deal of this event with a week long celebration from October 30th to November 3rd at the Honda Plaza.
Honda’s website just released the “ASIMO 10th …