As the world’s electronic companies scramble to set the agenda for wearable devices, one Japanese vegetable juice maker went one better on Thursday — unveiling a wearable tomato machine.
The “Tomatan” is a backpack that can be loaded with six mid-sized tomatoes, enough, say the makers, to power runners through this weekend’s Tokyo Marathon.
“Tomatoes have lots of nutrition that combats fatigue,” Shigenori Suzuki of maker Kagome said.
Photo: AFP
The Tomatan looks like a small humanoid robot — with a tomato for a head — and sits snugly on the athlete’s shoulders. Tugging a tiny lever in the foot moves the arms to catch a tomato from the dispensing shoot. The arms then rotate the fruit over the runner’s head and hold it in front of his mouth.
“We used about 100 tomatoes to complete this machine,” said Nobumichi Tosa, of creator Meiwa Denki, a company known for its off-the-wall devices and musical instruments.
“We focused mostly on its visual design,” Tosa said.
Despite the 8kg weight, Kagome’s Suzuki said he will don the device for a 5km fun-run today.
“I will run by his side carrying my tools, just like an F1 mechanic,” Tosa said.
In tomorrow’s full Tokyo Marathon, a runner from Kagome will participate with a lighter wearable tomato machine — the Petit-Tomatan — which weighs only about 3kg, Suzuki said.
The “Petit-Tomatan” has a delivery tube attached to a mini-tomato holster worn on the runner’s back, and even a timer that prevents the user from over-indulging and depleting their supply too quickly.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day