Telenoid - 17/2/'14
The program for today is visiting ATR: Advanced Telecommunications Research institute and Sharp (known for the pocket calculators and more recently: Televisions). Furthermore, the plan was to visit the Nara-koen park, but it was already dark when we arrived there so we did not go.
After a nice Family Mart breakfast, we left for the JR line to go to ATR. Sander joined us already and Wilfred joins us later on at Sharp.
When we arrived at the JR line close to the hostel, it turned out that two of us forgot their JR passes. Luckily, Tim was the day manager and he planned everything very loose with lots of fail-saves. While we waited for the forgetful people to return we could listen to the beautifully annoyingly constant repeating of the JR line tune.
After the JR line we took the bus to the ATR complex. We where three quarters of an hour early, so we waited. This because it is impolite to arrive early in Japan. Luckily, it was sunny! After receiving the general ATR talk we went to all the cool demonstrations! First there was a presentation about their exoskeleton and brain-interfacing. The first demonstration was the exoskeleton arm, very cool. Some of us could even try the futuristic looking body enhancement. Unfortunately, it was made for Japanese people and it was a little undersized. There was also a little robot who detected people in the room with lots of Kinect sensors and approached them to hand over a little card. Finally, we had a lot of fun with an unsettling little robot (called Telenoid) who mimicked the movement of a real person in another room.
At Sharp we listened to presentations about air ionizers and microbe killer machines. There was also a tour in the Sharp museum that showed us that the founder of Sharp was incredibly awesome and magnificent. Also, there was a talking automatic vacuum cleaner, that exclaimed loudly while we had a peaceful museum tour: "Fully charged!".
We finalized the day with some Italian food and quickly went to bed in Hotel Mikado, safe and sound in our Japanese style beds.
By: Frits Kuipers