Robii might be better than a babysitter. Billed as a child’s companion, the robot monkey is ready at a moment’s notice to play arcade games on its built-in interactive projector system. Robii teaches math and musical scales, too, to generate a “great and wise family living environment” and “recover the loneliness within the heart,” according to the creators at CompalComm (華寶通訊).
Mostly a communications company, CompalComm launched its robotics branch UrRobot in 2011. It is among a new group of Taiwanese firms developing service robots meant to meet modern personal demands, such as childcare in a society that works record-long hours.
To the upcoming Taipei International Robot Show (TIROS 2013, 台北國際機器人展), Shin Kong Security (新光保全) brings its latest security robots that could replace security guards in a shrinking labor force, or adults in a home.
Photo courtesy of TAIRoA
The show also offers bots that give hugs, tell bedtime stories and “educate.” The 15-cm BeRobot, by GeStream Technology Inc (極趣科技), is a super action figure marketed as a way of teaching children about artificial intelligence: The savvy kid can make it fight autonomously, like a Pokemon, or make it do the chores. At the exhibition’s Parents and Children zone, BeRobot will teach a crash course in programming and finish off with a dance performance.
“We’ve done Parents and Children activities for a while — there was one six years ago at the first robot exhibition — but before we needed to borrow imported robots,” said Chen Wen-chen (陳文貞), a show organizer and deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robotics Association (TAIROA, 台灣智慧自動化與機器人協會).
This year, the Parents and Children zone has competitions, games and products supplied by six manufacturers, all of them based in Taiwan. “We really couldn’t do that before,” said Chen.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has designated Taiwan robotics as a priority project, earmarking a total of NT$2 billion aimed at boosting output value of intelligent robotics from NT$20 billion to NT$250 billion by 2015.
So far, Taiwan’s robotics industry has focused mainly on industrial robotics and technologies like components, control panels and modules.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby