September 23, 2009

Robot Floor Tiles — an infinite walkway.

Amazing but practically useless, from Hiroo Iwata, of the University of Tsukuba.

The video is pretty cool, but the voiceover is in Japanese:

21 comments:

Jason (the commenter) said...

It would be great for a music video.

Peter Hoh said...

It's an infinite walkway -- for a mime.

As if they needed the encouragement.

Jason (the commenter) said...

You could walk inside a house in Asia and never have to take your shoes off.

miller said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
miller said...

Ahem.

Let's try this again - distracted by the video.

This is actually pretty cool. What's important is not this implementation, but the idea of forming a walkway as needed. This would eliminate the need to have paved roads/areas that don't let water soak in.

Jason (the commenter) said...

miller: This would eliminate the need to have paved roads/areas that don't let water soak in.

Wouldn't the robot floor tile still need something solid to operate on?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

It's an omage to ObamaCare.

An unnecessary contraption carrying Obama. Always changing, moving and going nowhere.

wv bowni

Jason (the commenter) said...

I think the most important question is: How can we use this during sex?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Wouldn't the robot floor tile still need something solid to operate on?

Forget the ground then

The sensors up in the ceiling relate the idea of satellites.

Flying cars?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Ballroom dancing?

William said...

Some capitalist with his insatiable greed will find some way of exploiting this utterly innocent invention.

blake said...

Practically useless?

I imagine my kids could use something like this to get in and out of their rooms after they haven't cleaned for a while.

Phil 314 said...

My kids would have loved this when they were younger and playing the "hot lava" game. You know, if you fall off (or are pushed off) the couch you'll fall into hot lava.

wv: constan Yeah, sure Stan can play too!

Penny said...

Those tiles need new slipcovers.

Ann Althouse said...

re "hot lava"

Ha ha. My kids did that.

Methadras said...

Well, this is Japanese, so I'm seeing how they are making this a prelude to Tentacle-furry-scat sex.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I'm impressed. I never thought I'd see cool technology that was even more useless then a Segway.

rhhardin said...

They seriously need hotter models.

MikeR said...

Useless? Wait till they make them small and make lots of them cheap. Instant freeway detour.

MadisonMan said...

That would be much cooler if the floor was hot molten lava (redundant, I know) and the robot tiles were the only way out before Goldfinger trained a laser on James Bond's -- oh wait a minute, I got distracted by the screenplay I'm writing.

Bad Penny said...

Useless? No way. Business and the miltiary will think of plenty of uses for smart boxes that know when they are at the end of the line and then move to the front of the line.

Robo-pontoon bridge.
Robo-cargo containers that shuffle themselves.
Robo-pallets in warehouses to move goods.

I think it'll be most useful in warehouses and on cargo ships.