The Exoskeletons Are Coming

A powerful prototype exoskeleton is being developed by a Panasonic subsidiary, ActiveLink.

Even if you lack the resources of Tony Stark, you can obtain a high-tech suit to enhance your natural abilities, or at least help you avoid a backache. Mechanical outfits, known as exoskeletons, are gaining a foothold in the real world.

The Japanese company Panasonic announced recently that it will start selling an exoskeleton designed to help workers lift and carry objects more easily and with less risk of injury. The suit was developed in collaboration with a subsidiary company called ActiveLink. It weighs just over 13 pounds and attaches to the back, thighs, and feet, enabling the wearer to carry 33 pounds of extra load. The device has been tested by warehouse handlers in Osaka, Japan, and is currently in trials with forestry workers in the region.

Panasonic’s device is among a small but growing number of exoskeletons available commercially—less fantastic and more cumbersome versions of a technology that’s been a staple of science fiction for some time. Though they have mainly been tested in medical and military settings, the technology is starting to move beyond these use niches, and it could make a difference for many manual laborers, especially as the workforce ages.

Panasonic is to sell an exoskeleton designed to help with manual work.

“We expect that exoskeletons, or power-assist suits, will be widely used in people’s lives in 15 years,” says Panasonic spokesperson Mio Yamanaka, who is based in Osaka, Japan. “We expect that they will be used for tasks that require physical strength, such as moving things and making deliveries, public works, construction, agriculture, and forestry.”

The Panasonic suit includes a lightweight carbon-fiber motor; sensors activate the motor when the wearer is lifting or carrying an object. With ActiveLink, the company is testing another, much larger suit designed to help carry loads as heavy as 220 pounds.

Some other companies are showing an interest in technology that can assist workers and help prevent injury. In collaboration with ergonomics researchers at the Technical University of Munich, the German carmaker BMW has given workers a custom-made, 3-D-printed orthotic device that fits over the thumb and helps them perform repetitive tasks. Another German carmaker, Audi, is testing a wearable device from a company called Noonee, which provides back support for workers who need to perform repetitive crouching motions.

Another Japanese company, Cyberdyne, already sells exoskeletons for medical and industrial use. The company’s technology, which was spun out of the University of Tsukuba, uses nerve signals to detect a wearer’s intention to move before applying assistive force. Earlier this year, Cyberdyne signed an agreement with the Japanese automation company Omron to develop assistive technology for use in factories.

US Bionics a company cofounded by Homayoon Kazerooni, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is also working to commercialize two exoskeletons—one for rehabilitation, which is currently being tested in Italy, and another for industrial use. These are designed to be very lightweight and conform well to a person’s normal motion. Kazerooni says the industrial model, which he demonstrated at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute last month, will be significantly lighter, cheaper, and more flexible. “The key is not just what the exoskeleton does in terms of lessening the load,” he says. “It’s also about preventing maneuvers the user could do without the device.”

Read Full Article: MIT Technology Review

Abandoned Golf Courses Are Being Transformed into Solar Farms

Golf is a dying sport, and country club memberships are seen as an elitist relic of the past. But cultural changes are only one reason golf courses are falling out of favor: The chemical-laden, water-guzzling greens are especially irresponsible for areas hit by drought. Here’s an idea from Japan for those sunny green fairways: Use them to generate solar energy instead.

Japan energy giant Kyocera broke ground last week on a 23-megawatt solar farm that’s being installed on an abandoned golf course in the Kyoto Prefecture, making it the largest solar energy array in the region. But that’s not even the only golf-to-solar project in the country. A 92-megawatt solar farm is planned for land in Kagoshima Prefecture that was designated for a golf course, but was never built.

Repurposing golf courses for energy generation makes sense in Japan, where an economic crisis reigned in frivolous expenses and space for solar panels is at a premium (Kyocera is also behind the famous floating solar arrays just off Japan’s coast). But the idea it seems to be catching on in the US as well. According to Quartz, golf courses in New York and Minnesota are also replacing golf courses with solar farms.

These aren’t even the sunniest spots in the country—think of the potential in places that could really use all that water being dumped on golf courses, like Arizona and California. The overdevelopment of golf infrastructure has resulted in a glut of courses in these arid climates that also happen to have lots of sun.

Read Full Article: Gizmodo

America challenges Japan to real-life battle of giant robots

Image Credit: MegaBots/S.N. Jacobson

Finally, let the robot wars begin! MegaBots is laying the foundation for what could be the prequel to the giant mech vs. giant monster flick “Pacific Rim.” The Boston-based company on Tuesday challenged Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industries, creator of the Kuratas giant robot, to a duel against its Megabot Mark 2.

If you’re having as a hard time as I repressing the geek-gasm over the news, you might not want to watch the video below from MegaBots (complete with Japanese subtitles) that highlights both giant, pilotable fighting robots before issuing the official trans-Pacific challenge.

“Suidobashi, we have a giant robot, you have a giant robot; you know what needs to happen,” says MegaBots co-founder Matt Oehrlein in the video, while wearing an American flag as a cape. “We challenge you to a duel.”

According to the video, the Mark 2 weighs six tons and is piloted by a team of two capable of firing three-pound paint cannonballs up to 100 miles per hour. Kuratas is lighter at just 4.5 tons but boasts a pair of Gatling guns and advanced targeting system with a heads-up display.

Oehrlein says both teams will need time to make battle modifications. He tells Suidobashi to name a battlefield where their giant robots can face off in one year. No word yet on whether the Japanese team has accepted the challenge.

I’d be happy to coordinate hosting the battle here in New Mexico if that’s what it takes to make sure this happens. I definitely know we’ve got some giant robot enthusiasts in the neighborhood, and who doesn’t love a good giant robot battle on a Southwestern summer day?

Read Full Article: CNET

Toyota, Nissan, Honda Back Hydrogen Stations for Fuel Cells

Image Credit: WHIO

Toyota, Nissan and Honda are working together to get more fuel cell vehicles on roads in what they call Japan’s big push toward “a hydrogen society.”

Fuel cell vehicles emit no pollution. They run on the power created when hydrogen stored as fuel combines with oxygen in the air to make water.

Hydrogen fueling stations are needed to make the technology a viable option. Only 23 have opened in Japan so far, with hundreds more being planned.

The automakers pledged up to 11 million yen ($90,000) per hydrogen station per year, to build and maintain them.

Officials from Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. appeared together in a news conference in Tokyo Wednesday.

The stations already get government subsidies, but they are very expensive and are operating in the red. The automakers’ financing is designed to alleviate that, and proliferation of the technology is expected to lower costs.

Japan is trying to get ahead of the rest of the world in a push for a hydrogen society, which requires energy companies, automakers and the government to work together. Japan also wants to make fuel cells a showcase for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The concern about running out of fossil fuels affects many nations, but it’s especially telling for resource-poor Japan. Green auto technology is also critical to curb global warming.

Toyota executive Kiyotaka Ise said automakers have to play an active role in promoting fuel cells.

Hitoshi Kawaguchi, an executive from Nissan, said automakers can compete in products, including fuel cell cars, but they have to cooperate in infrastructure, such as hydrogen fueling stations.

Read Full Article: ABC News

Japan aims to resume Antarctic whaling later this year

Image Credit: Demanjo

TOKYO (AP) — Japan says it plans to resume whale hunts in the Antarctic later this year, even though the International Whaling Commission says Tokyo hasn’t proven that the mammals need to be killed for research.

The IWC’s Scientific Committee said in a report Friday that it wasn’t able to determine whether lethal sampling is necessary for whale stock management and conservation. In April, an IWC experts’ panel made similar comments about a revised Japanese Antarctic whaling plan submitted after the International Court of Justice ruled last year that Japan’s earlier hunts were not truly scientific.

The IWC banned commercial whaling in 1986, but Japan continued killing whales under an exemption for research. After the ICJ’s ruling, Japan sent a nonlethal expedition to the Antarctic for the 2014 season.

Japanese officials said Friday they will submit additional data to support their argument. They said Japan still plans to resume whaling in the Antarctic this winter season.

“We have not changed any policies and our goal,” Joji Morishita, Japan’s representative to the IWC, told reporters. He said Japan will respond sincerely to “scientifically backed comments” in Friday’s report, but criticized it as lacking consensus.

Reflecting the sharp divide among the nearly 90 member nations of the international body, the report laid out both sides of the argument.

Under Tokyo’s revised proposal for the upcoming whaling season, it plans to catch 333 minke whales each year between 2015 and 2027, about one-third of what it used to target.

Japan’s actual catch has fallen in recent years in part because of declining domestic demand for whale meat. Protests by the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd also contributed to the lower catch.

Read Full Article: AP

Giant Floating Solar Power Stations Are Japan’s Newest Power Source

After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan got serious about investing in renewable energy, becoming one of the world leaders in solar power. But the nation faced a problem in its solar efforts: a lack of suitable land.

In a promising solution, the country is now turning to floating solar power stations, this month going live with its largest such systems to date in two reservoirs in Kato City in the nation’s Hyogo prefecture, Quartz reports. The systems consist of almost 9,000 solar panels on a bed of polyethylene and are fully waterproofed.

According to Kyocera, the electronics manufacturer behind the floating solar systems, the two new stations in Kato City are expected to generate 3,300 megawatt hours annually, providing enough electricity to power about 920 typical households. The company is also behind another floating solar farm just east of Tokyo, slated to open next March, that will be even larger, powering almost 5,000 households.

The “mega-plants” have a number of benefits compared to traditional land-based solar plants. As Wired previously reported, the floating plants generate power more efficiently because of the cooling effect of the water underneath the system. In addition, the shade generated by the stations helps reduce both water evaporation and algae growth, and the systems overall are also drought-friendly thanks to how muchwater they conserve.

There are some concerns, too, such as how the structures will be able to withstand natural disasters. According to the National Geographic, however, the systems were found to withstand hurricane-speed winds up to 118 miles per hour in testing at Onera, France’s aerospace lab. In addition, the systems have been described as earthquake-proof. But they also can be costlier to install and maintain than traditional solar systems.

Still, Kyocera argues that the floating islands could play a huge role in helping Japan meet its goal of achieving 100 percent renewable energy by the year 2040.

“[T]he country has many reservoirs for agricultural and flood-control purposes,” Ichiro Ikeda, a Kyocera spokesman, told the National Geographic. “There is great potential in carrying out solar power generation on these water surfaces.”

Read Full Article: The Huffington Post

What’s ahead for Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant

Image Credit: CNN

TOKYO (AP) — Four years after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, the road ahead remains riddled with unknowns.

The government approved a revised 30-to-40-year roadmap Friday that delays by three years the start of a key initial step — the removal of still-radioactive fuel rods in the three reactors that had meltdowns following the March 2011 disaster in northeast Japan.

Experts have yet to pinpoint the exact location of the melted fuel inside the three reactors and study it, and still need to develop robots capable of working safely in such highly radioactive conditions. And then there’s the question of what to do with the waste.

Some of the uncertainties and questions:

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THE FUEL RODS: Kept cool in storage pools on the top floor of each of the three reactors, they need to be removed to free up space for robots and other equipment to go down to the containment chambers. The 1,573 bundles of fuel rods — mostly used but some new — are considered among the highest risks at the plant, because they are uncovered within the reactor building. To remove them, the building roofs must be taken off and replaced with a cover that prevents radioactive dust from flying out. Each building is damaged differently and requires its own cover design and equipment. The government and plant operator TEPCO hope to start the process in 2018, three years later than planned.

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THE MELTED FUEL: Once the spent fuel rods are out of the way, workers can turn their attention to what is expected to be the hardest part of the decommissioning: Removing the melted fuel from the three wrecked reactors. The biggest questions are where the melted fuel is and in what condition. Radiation levels are too high for humans to approach. Based on computer simulations and a few remote-controlled probes, experts believe the melted fuel has breached the cores and fallen to the bottom of the containment chambers, some possibly seeping into the concrete foundation.

A plan to repair the containment chambers and fill them with water so that the melted fuel can be handled while being kept cool may be unworkable, and experts are studying alternatives. How to reach the debris — from the top or from the side — is another question. A vertical approach would require robots and equipment that can dangle as low as 30 meters (90 feet) to reach the bottom. Experts are also trying to figure out how to obtain debris samples to help develop radiation-resistant robots and other equipment that can handle the molten fuel.

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CONTAMINATED WATER: The plant is still plagued with massive amounts of contaminated water — cooling water that must be added regularly, and subsequently leaks out of the reactors and mixes with groundwater that seeps into the reactor basements. The volume of water grows by 300 tons daily. TEPCO runs it through treatment machines to remove most radioactive elements, and then stores it in thousands of tanks on the compound. Water leaks pose environmental concerns and health risks to workers. Nuclear experts say controlled release of the treated water into the ocean would be the ultimate solution.

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RADIOACTIVE WASTE: Japan currently has no plan for the waste that comes out of the plant. Under the roadmap, the government and TEPCO are supposed to compile a basic plan by March 2018. Waste management is an extremely difficult task that requires developing technology to compact and reduce the toxicity of the waste, while finding a waste storage site is practically impossible considering public sentiment.

Read Full Article: AP

Sea Shepherd to Pay Millions to Whale Killers

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society agreed to pay $2.55 million to Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research on Monday as part of a settlement to resolve a long-standing legal battle over the anti-whaling group’s tactics against Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic.

The settlement came the same day the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Sea Shepherd’s appeal of a federal court’s finding that the group was in contempt of a court order to stay clear of Japanese whaling ships.

The activist group’s tactics at sea include throwing smoke bombs at Japanese whaling ships and using metal-reinforced ropes to damage propellers and rudders. The question is whether those tactics—which typically take place in international waters—amount to piracy, and whether a U.S. court can order those activities to be stopped if they take place outside its jurisdiction.

Sea Shepherd believes the court can’t, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court upheld that it can. Now, thanks to the settlement, Sea Shepherd will be giving millions of dollars to an organization it has tirelessly battled against in a fight to save the whales.

“Sea Shepherd believes that it complied with the Ninth Circuit injunction and does not agree with the holding that it was in contempt,” said Claire Loebs Davis, Sea Shepherd’s legal counsel. “This settlement resolves the issue of damages resulting from those contempt findings and allows us to put this issue that we have been litigating for more than two years finally behind us.”

The settlement stems from an ICR lawsuit filed in 2011 against Sea Shepherd and its founder, Paul Watson. The court originally denied the ICR’s motion for an injunction against Sea Shepherd. But in December 2012, the Ninth Circuit reversed the decision, which meant Sea Shepherd and Watson had to stay at least 500 yards from Japanese whaling ships in the Southern Ocean.

The court also determined that Sea Shepherd’s actions amounted to piracy under international law. That charge has been disputed by some legal experts, because the group’s actions did not involve the pursuit of monetary gain.

Sea Shepherd’s U.S. operation has maintained that it was not in contempt because it halted all of its involvement in the Southern Ocean after the injunction, but the group did transfer ownership of one of its boats to Sea Shepherd Netherlands. Because that boat was later used in the organization’s Southern Ocean campaign, the court ruled Sea Shepherd was indeed in contempt of the injunction.

The settlement outlines that Sea Shepherd will pay $2.55 million to the ICR, and in turn, the whaling organization will drop all remaining claims against Watson. The money will come from a Sea Shepherd legal fund and “[does] not draw from donor funds,” Davis said.

Gavin Carter, a Washington, D.C.–based adviser to the ICR, welcomed the settlement.

“The agreement shows that you can’t willfully ignore the law, even on the high seas,” Carter said. “The underlying case is about safety at sea, and the contempt charge relates to Sea Shepherd continuing to attack research vessels.”

The settlement, Davis added, will allow Sea Shepherd to concentrate on counterclaims it filed in continuing litigation in the district court, where the ICR is seeking a permanent injunction against the group.

“Now we can focus on the fact that they have been involved in illegal whaling in the Southern Ocean for a number of years and that they have taken violent actions against activists who have tried to prevent their illegal whaling,” Davis said.

Sea Shepherd says the ICR tries to kill more than 1,000 whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary each year, including minke, humpback, and endangered fin whales.

Read Full Article: Take Part

WikiLeaks issues call for $100,000 bounty on monster trade treaty

Image Credit: International Forum on Globalization

Today WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a $100,000 reward for America’s Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said

“[They] can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”

The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privileged access. Today, WikiLeaks is taking steps to bring about the public’s rightful access to the missing chapters of this monster trade pact.

The TPP is the largest agreement of its kind in history: a multi-trillion dollar international treaty being negotiated in secret by the US, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia and 7 other countries. The treaty aims to create a new international legal regime that will allow transnational corporations to bypass domestic courts, evade environmental protections, police the internet on behalf of the content industry, limit the availability of affordable generic medicines, and drastically curtail each country’s legislative sovereignty.

The TPP bounty also heralds the launch of WikiLeaks new competition system, which allows the public to pledge prizes towards each of the world’s most wanted leaks. For example, members of the public can now pledge on the missing chapters of the TPP.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said,

“The transparency clock has run out on the TPP. No more secrecy. No more excuses. Let’s open the TPP once and for all.”

Read Full Article: Wikileaks

Scary Beautiful Video Captures Japan Volcano’s Violent Explosion

A volcano in Japan erupted violently Friday morning, sending a dark ash cloud an estimated 30,000 feet (9,100 meters) into the sky. No deaths and only one minor injury have so far been reported by the country’s government.

The volcano, Mount Shindake, rises above the small island of Kuchinoerabujima, which lies about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the larger Japanese island Kyushu and about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Tokyo. The small island’s 140 residents have been evacuated by Japan’s coast guard.

Shindake last erupted in August 2014. Before that it had erupted in 1980.

At least one flight has been diverted as a result of the ash cloud, but there hasn’t been widespread disruption to travel because of the volcano’s remoteness, says Charlie Mandeville, the coordinator of the Volcano Hazards Program with the U.S. Geological Survey.

“If it had been closer to Tokyo or another city it would have been a different story,” says Mandeville.

Shindake is a classic stratovolcano, or cone-shaped volcano, formed from alternating layers of lava flows and fragmented deposits.

The eruption wasn’t entirely unexpected, since Japanese scientists had detected increased seismic activity and plumes of steam rising from the crater on May 18.

“There was a really loud, ‘dong’ sound of an explosion, and then black smoke rose, darkening the sky,” Nobuaki Hayashi, a local village chief, told the national broadcaster NHK.

Japan is an archipelago of thousands of islands that were formed largely through the action of such volcanoes. The process is driven by the country’s location along the Ring of Fire, a fringe of tectonically active coastline that surrounds much of the Pacific Ocean.

Read Full Article: National Geographic 

Japan town to still hunt dolphins after aquariums’ rejection

Image Credit: The Independent

TOKYO (AP) — The fishing town of Taiji will not stop its dolphin hunts, the mayor said Thursday, after Japan’s aquariums decided to stop buying captured dolphins under international pressure sparked by cruelty concerns.

“We are hunting under the permission of the Japanese government and prefecture, and so we will continue to protect our fishermen and the methods. We will not quit,” said Kazutaka Sangen, mayor of the small town in central Japan.

Eating dolphin and whale meat is waning in Japan as people’s tastes change, but some Japanese see it as no different from eating chicken or beef. They are puzzled by how the international view on dolphin and whale hunting is so different from that of traditional fishing communities like Taiji.

On Wednesday, the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums announced it would stop buying Taiji dolphins. It had risked being suspended by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which characterized the Taiji hunt as “cruel” and decided that none of its members should acquire dolphins in such a way.

In Taiji’s hunt, notoriously filmed in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove,” dolphins are scared with banging, herded into a cove and speared by fishermen for their meat. The best-looking animals are sold to aquariums and marine shows for thousands of dollars each.

Sangen scoffed at WAZA’s views.

“WAZA gave in to the anti-whaling activists that turned dolphin hunting into an international problem. I believe there was a better way to handle the issue,” he told reporters.

Even if all of the Japanese group’s 63 member aquariums and 89 zoos stop buying Taiji dolphins, they could be sold in other places, including overseas marine parks. Taiji also runs its own aquarium.

WAZA has more than 1,000 members and has talked with the Japanese aquarium group about the Taiji hunt for more than a decade.

Read Full Article: AP

Japan aquariums say they’ll stop getting Taiji-hunt dolphins

Image Credit: The Huffington Post

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s aquariums promised Wednesday to stop acquiring dolphins captured in a bloody hunt that was depicted in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove” and has caused global outrage.

The move by the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums follows a decision last month by the Swiss-based umbrella group World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, or WAZA, to suspend the Japanese organization’s membership.

WAZA characterized the Taiji hunt as “cruel,” and decided that none of its members should acquire dolphins in such a way.

In that hunt, dolphins are scared with banging, herded into a cove and speared by fishermen for their meat. The best-looking ones are sold to aquariums.

In a letter to WAZA, the Japanese group, which comprises 89 zoos and 63 aquariums, said it would abide by WAZA’s decision.

“It is our wish at JAZA to remain as a member of WAZA,” chair Kazutoshi Arai said in a letter addressed to WAZA President Lee Ehmke.

The campaign against the Taiji hunt has drawn Hollywood stars as well as the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd.

The latest move was welcomed by animal welfare groups.

“This momentous decision marks the beginning of the end for dolphin hunting in Japan,” said Sarah Lucas, the CEO of Australia for Dolphins.

Officials in Taiji, a small fishing village in central Japan, and fishermen have defended the hunt as tradition, saying that eating dolphin meat is no different from eating beef or chicken.

Eating dolphins is a delicacy most Japanese never experience. Many Japanese are horrified by the dolphin killing, and have joined the campaign against the Taiji hunt.

“The Cove,” which won an Academy Award in 2009, focuses on veteran dolphin activist Ric O’Barry, who trained dolphins for the 1960s “Flipper” TV series before deciding to devote his life to protecting the mammals and keeping them in nature.

Read Full Article: AP