Raw Japan

Two dimensions of 3D

An old Saturday Night Live segment once included this joke when Frank Sinatra was still alive:

“‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ is back in town, and sources report nobody’s interested and nobody cares.”

That line came back to me after Sony,  once Japan’s “Big Blue”, announced Thursday its vision of an $11-billion 3D market by early 2013, with three-dimensional PlayStation 3s, TVs, Blu-ray Disc players, cameras, live broadcasting and — the historic staple — movies and theatres.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Rick Wilking

I attended Sony’s briefing that included a 2D video of its 3D world, plans for 3,000 projector installations by end-2010, a single-lens High-Frame-Rate movie camera (when previously it took two cameras to make three dimensions), and an end-to-end solution still involving glasses.

The plan was wider than 3D (it pushed back a 5-percent operating profit target to 2013) , but investors sold it Friday, and few analysts saw the technology quickly ending six years of TV losses.

Brain-powered travel

It may not look like much, but this run of the mill electric wheelchair runs on brainpower – no hands required.

Part of a joint project between Japan’s Riken Brain Science Institute and Toyota, the chair reads subject’s brainwaves and converts them into movement.

While I found the technology itself quite impressive, there’s little doubt that the brain-reading headgear won’t be making fashion headlines anytime soon.

Until recently, the amount of processing time between brainwaves and the actual motion had been the major stumbling block of these type of technologies.

While increasing processing power is the driving factor, one additional method to speed up the response to get a clearer, more “noise free” reading on the brainwaves.

As I learned while watching the setup for the brain cap, this currently involves using “wet” electrodes, meaning putting a conductive goo between the sensor and the user’s scalp — not a technology you’d want to use after going to the hair salon.

3D TV is on its way

Whenever I hear the words “3D TV”, I’m reminded of a scene in the 1971 flick Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in which Mike Teavee uses Wonka’s television chocolate machine to miniaturise himself to fit inside a TV screen. As the mini Mike shouts with excitement about his TV debut, his mother reaches into the TV, picks him up and puts him in her purse. As a kid, that was as close as I’d get to 3D TV.

But on Monday, although I wasn’t quite miniaturized, I had the chance to visit a Panasonic plant in Osaka where I put on my own pair of TV glasses and watched 3D TV in a way young Mike Teavee would have loved.

I watched two F1 drivers jostle for position on the track before one roared by the other, appearing as if the F1 car was driving off the screen straight at me. In the next scene, athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics flipped, spun, biked, swam and ran as the 3D effect separated them from the background, adding a sense of realism and making for some entertaining TV watching. Floating confetti at the opening ceremonies looked so real I thought I could catch it in my hand.

Panasonic showed off their new 50-inch model 3D TV this week, hoping it will become the size of choice for home theatre enthusiasts when it is released to the public sometime in 2010. The introduction of this smaller sized model — compared to the 103-inch model it debuted last October — brings Panasonic one step closer to delivering 3D TV to living rooms worldwide. It will be debuted for the public at CEATEC Japan from Oct 6-10.

As Panasonic engineer Keisuke Suetsugi explains, active shutters in the glasses work in sync with the TV and Blu-ray player to rapidly alternate full HD images between the viewer’s left and right eyes, tricking the brain into seeing 3D on a 2D screen.

3D images you can touch

In Sci-Fi films, there’s one thing you never see people use: a mouse and keyboard. In our 21st century world, technology is supposed to have advanced to where all you need to do is talk to a computer for it to respond.

Well, reality may now be catching up with fantasy as a Tokyo University research team takes the first step towards redefining how we interact with electronic machines.

Taking a page from Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report”, they’ve made 3D holograms that you not only can see, but touch.

Three-dimensional images are nothing new, as anyone who has a credit card will likely have a hologram on the card to prevent forgery, but they’ve been no more than optical tricks up to this point.

“Up until now, holography has been for the eyes only, and if you tried to touch it, your hand would go right through, but now we have a technology that adds the sensation of touch,” Hiroyuki Shinoda, a professor at Tokyo University and one of the developers of the technology, explained when asked about the invention.

An emitter that delivers localised pressure on a surface matched to where the hologram is projected tricks the brain into thinking the pressure comes from the object that appears to be there.

Honda’s new wheel

It looks deceptively simple: a stool with a wheel, or an electric unicycle.

But Honda Motor, maker of cars, motorbikes, robots and aircraft, says it embodies state-of-the-art technology and may one day become the smallest means of transport for humans.

I saw the new U3-X at a Honda media launch. It’s shaped like a figure-8 and moves in any direction set by the person sitting on top, by leaning their body back, forth and sideways.

It weighs in at under 22 lb (10 kg), runs about an hour on one charge of its battery at up to about 4 mph (6 kph), about the pace of brisk walk.

The machine uses balance control technology developed in its research efforts on its famous Asimo humanoid robot, Honda told us, but is not ready for sale yet as the company is still developing it.

When the company showed the device to reporters, some were quick to ask whether it is Honda’s answer to Segway, a two-wheeled battery-powered scooter, which has come to be seen as a pioneer in futuristic personal mobility.

from Left field:

G-strings, the bare-faced solution to swimming’s problems

With the row over space-age bodysuits threatening to engulf swimming, it was only a matter of time before a top athlete lent his voice to calls for a radical, no-nonsense solution.

Japan's Ryosuke Irie reckons racing in skimpy G-strings might be the best way -- indeed the only way -- to ensure a level playing field before the bodysuit wars tie swimming up in so much red tape the public lose interest.

"We would be better off," said the 19-year-old, whose recent 200 metres backstroke world record is still awaiting ratification from swimming's governing body FINA.

"We need a set of rules people will agree to and stick to."

Concerns over hi-tech bodysuits have muddied the waters since before last year's Olympics when world records began tumbling after Speedo unveiled their drag-reducing LZR suit.

American Michael Phelps wore one when he won a record eight gold medals in Beijing.