Summon a virtual family

If your favorite character appeared in the real world? If he or she talks with you everyday? They are just the future and the ultimate dream. IoT startup Gatebox has released a new model of summoning gadget that you can live with your favorite character.

They have already released the limited production model of it at the end of 2016, but the new model released this time is a slim body than that, the price is 162,000 yen (tax included) and it is 50% of the conventional price.
"Living together expenses" of 1,500 yen per month are required separately. This is a virtual home robot that can communicate by displaying virtual characters inside a box by projection technology and sensing technology. It has a dual microphone on the top, you can speak to the character from afar. In addition, it also has a camera and a human sensor, recognizing your face and movement, smiling for you when it find your face. For example, when you go home, this will auto detect you and talks "Welcome back". They will deliver trial version of their original character Azuma Hikari along with the release of the new model. You can enjoy voice dialogue, active action by face recognition, and chat linked with messaging application LINE with her.

They will release her official version in December. In the official version, you can use features like celebrating your anniversary with her. It costs 1,500 yen (tax excluded) per month to live with her, but it is free until the end of March 2019. The size of this is 210 mm x 277 mm x 549 mm, weighs about 5 kg, and power supply is AC100V ~ 240V. They have already started reservation reception and delivery is scheduled for October or later.

via https://gatebox.ai/home/

Next Generation Fish Picture Book

It is the best season to play at the sea and river right now. You may go out to there with family or friends. What would you do if you saw fish that did not know names? Although Google image search is also good, but mobile application "fish" making use of AI is easier.

This app uses AI to analyze the photos of fish in your smartphone and tells their name, You can not know the names of the fish, but also their types, characteristic, and which recipe is suitable for them. If the fish were a dangerous kind with poison, that information is also displayed.
B.creation, who released this brought the fishing boat reservation site, they asked their users to cooperate, and gathered about 3 million fish photos and made a database. They added the tags of the fish kind to the each photos and let AI learn. They increased the accuracy of AI by letting one kind of fish learn various photos with different conditions such as brightness and angle. Now, the application corresponds to 80 kinds of fish. Application download is free(iOS/Android).

Speaker making a bathroom into a studio

Sing in the bathroom --- it may be experienced everyone. If you use bathCAPSULE, a bath speaker accessory, your bathroom will be studio and you will have more fun singing.
Gadget company BoCo sells the bone conduction speaker docodemoSPEAKER which radiates sound by vibrating places and things that placed it. They started selling bathCAPSULE, the bath accessory for docodemo SPEAKER for supporters only at the crowdfunding platform Makuake.

When you attach docodemoSPEAKER to bathtub with bathCAPSULE, the whole bath vibrates and becomes a speaker. According to the developers, it is particularly good for bass reproduction, and the sound of the acoustic wood bass that is difficult to play with ordinary speakers is wonderful. It is common to use at the edge of a bathtub, but when you sink it into a bathtub, you can feel the vibration of the sound throughout the body. Of course bathCAPSULE is waterproof and you can easily put docodemoSPEAKER in it.
The size of docodemoSPEAKER is 77 mm × 54 mm and weighs approximately 360 g, if you charge it for about 3 hours using a micro USB cable, it will run for about 7 hours continuous.
You can purchase a set of docodemoSPEAKER and bathCAPSULE at 20,700 yen ~ 42,851 yen. In addition, they have released color variations of Silver Black, Violet Blue, Royal Burgundy and Chrome Yellow.

 

Let's make mahjong play easier

Mahjong is a traditional table game developed in China's Qing dynasty era and is now familiar all over the world. Because it is a game played by four people, it will deepen friendship, and is a psychological warfare game that requires logical thinking and fingertip action, so it is also used as a preventive measure for dementia in Japan. On the other hand, Mahjong has many types of tiles and their combination patterns, it is very difficult and troublesome to calculate the score of the players by remembering them. As a result, not only beginners, as well as players enjoying mahjong from day to day, there are not many people who can calculate scores perfectly, which is a barrier to the expansion of Mahjong players.
So, Creative Agency North Shore has released iOS application Mahjong Camera which can calculate the score of Mahjong by image recognition technology.

If you launch the this and hold the iPhone or iPad camera over the Mahjong tiles, the application recognizes each tiles and calculates the score of Mahjong soon. For its development, they adopted KDDI's image recognition library. It is known for recognition accuracy of the world highest level. In addition, they are planning not only to calculate the score, but also to add a suggestion function that recommends an efficient combination of tiles and respond to Mixed Reality head mounted display. The application download is free.

Body odor measuring instrument

Finally summer has come. Summer in Japan is hot and humid, so it's uncomfortable, it's as if you are in a sauna wearing clothes. Especially this year the rainy season is over earlier than usual, the temperature has exceeded 30 degrees since late June. Health gadget company Tanita released an odor checker ES-100 to check own body odor and perfume scent on July 1.

There are hundreds of substances that cause body odor, ES-100 measures components contained in sweat, estimates the amount of each odor component using its own algorithm, and calculates body odor at the level indicate. In addition, it corresponds not only to body odor but also to fragrance of perfume and aromatics.Tanita uses the detection algorithm by the semiconductor gas sensor for this, they applied the know-hows of breath checker and alcohol checker of their hit products.
Usage is simple. When you open the sensor part of this, the power supply turns on automatically, and the measurement is completed only by bringing the sensor close to a parts where odor such as neck, head, and armpit are concerned for about ten seconds.

This determines the odor in 11 steps from 0 ~ 10. According to them, if you beyond level 5, you need some care.
The size of this is 94 mm × 52 mm × 25 mm, the weight is about 60 grams. The color variation is only black. Semiconductor sensors are cartridge type and need to be replaced after using 2000 times or one year. The price is an open price, the direct sales price is 13,824yen (tax included) and the optional cartridge is 5378yen (tax included). The main target of this is businessmen of 40s ~ 50s who begin to be aware of body odor, and Tanita aim to sell 10,000 units a year.