CEATEC (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) holds a major technology exhibition in Japan and is Asia’s largest interactive exhibition on communications, information and imaging fields. This year at CES, they presented a few demonstrations. Among the most noteworthy were Nissan’s robots.
Nissan demonstrated the future of automotive technology by showing a video of their Bio-Mimetic Non-Collision Robot. In a joint venture with the University of Tokyo, the robot mimics the collision avoidance behavior of insects using a laser rangefinder which acts as compound eyes that detect obstacles in a 180 degree radius, calculates their distance and sends commands that allow the robot to avoid them.
Nissan also had a Robot Agent whose head sits on the dashboard of the car and scans the driver’s face and listens to speech patterns. The Robot Agent can then detect the driver’s emotional state and respond accordingly by talking of acting to help relax the driver.
Wired has a 7-minute YouTube video of the non-collision robot.