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.

Retro style electronic cigarette

Toward the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, the new tobacco laws and regulations are now being discussed at the government in Japan. On the other hand, the popularity of smoke-free electronic cigarettes is increasing. So Numata-Chaho, who sells electronic cigarettes and their goods, has announced a new electronic cigarette "electronic Kiseru" in a retro form.

Kiseru is a traditional Japanese smoking pipe. It began to be used around the 16th century and became a common daily necessity in the Edo period, but as people enter the modern era gradually become obsolete, few people currently using it.
This is a gadget that revived Kiseru to the present age.

As a tool for coordinating with kimono and immersing them in emotion, they aim to appeal this to a wide range of tobacco lovers as nostalgic contents. And They are planning to sell this to overseas tourists as well. Although Kiseru has a very long and narrow shape, all parts such as constant voltage output system, air flow detection sensor, and battery are stored in this. Battery is rechargeable with lithium ion battery, and you can charge this by placing it on a charger like a cigarette tray.

The USB cable is unnecessary, and the LED emits during charging. Also, it does not have a power button, when you suck it, automatically works by the airflow sensor. They have not yet announced the release date and price of this, but they are planning to start sales in this year.

The robot of a most famous character

Japan already has many home robots and robot toys, so Takara-Tomy chose one of the most famous characters in Japan to counter them. Pikachu-shaped robot toy "HelloPika" is a new product focused on speaking behavior.

It has a sound recognition function, and when you talk to this, it responds variously with the voice of Pikachu, but they are all expressed as "Pika". In addition, it sings, activates skills, nods, laugh and makes the cheeks flash. If you titillate its sides, this may tickle and laugh. It's almost like interacting with pets.
The size of this is only 75mm × 115mm × 45mm and both arms have a clip-like structure, so you can put this in a shirt or bag pocket and take it outside. It works with two AAA batteries, the price is 3,229yen (including tax), and they release this on August 4th. Further, they plan to release this not only in Japan, but also in nine countries including Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. 

(c)Nintendo・Creatures・GAME FREAK・TV Tokyo・ShoPro・JR Kikaku
(c)Pokemon

Tutoring school in the pocket

In present day, only real textbooks are not tools of study and rather, those numbers are decreasing rapidly. On the other hand, it is mobile apps for studying that are increasing instead of them. Educational services company EduLab has released a free learning video application "Study Gear" for primary school and junior high school students.

They noticed that many of the existing learning mobile applications are aimed at university entrance examinations and many of them are charged. So, they provide learning contents optimized for the low age group in Study Gear for free. The subjects handled by this application are national language, mathematics, society, science, and English, and you can learn them at your own pace with original short animation of one and a half ~ two minutes. If you are good at a particular subject, you can also learn by skipping. They cooperated with ONE MEDIA in video production to produce high quality learning contents, and publishing company Obunsha was responsible for providing and supervising the questions. In addition, this application is supposed to be used by parents and their children, the more they learn by using this, the parents can obtain Study Gear Point, and can exchange them for NTT DoCoMo's point service d-point. Now, there are 500 kinds of contents showed in this application, and they are aiming to increase these to 3000 kinds in one year. Downloading and using the application is free(iOS/Android).

Toys to help studying

INTERNATIONAL TOKYO TOY SHOW 2018 was held this month, many toy companies released interesting new products accordingly. Among them, there were a lot of digital gadgets for kids reflecting the present day.
Sega-Toys will release a tablet Magical Me Pad for girls tied-up with Disney in August 9.

It has a camera for face recognition, video shooting function, translation function, Game development application touch pen and AI. For example, when users talk something to it in Japanese, Mickey Mouse translates it into English and talks on the screen. In addition, they cooperated with publisher Gakken Plus to install learning drills and Japanese-English dictionary on this, when users study using these, AI measures their proficiency level and quizzes questions suitable for them. This is a function reflecting the necessity of English compulsion at elementary school, but this also supports another new compulsory subject, programming learning. In the game development application, users can simulate game development by programming using Disney characters. Of course this also has features other than study. Currently, Youtuber is a very popular job for Japanese kids, and users can make their own videos like Youtuber using video shooting and editing functions. Unfortunately this have not internet function, but it supports microSD and users can store data in it.
The size of this is 189mm × 123mm × 20mm, and it works for 3 hours continuously with four AA batteries. The target age is over 6 years old, and the price is 16,200yen(including tax).

(c)Disney
(c)Disney. Based on the “Winnie the Pooh”works by A.A.Milne and E.H.Shepard.
(c)Disney/Pixar

Cosmetic application using AR

Cosmetics are one of the difficult items that purchase on e-commerce sites.So, cosmetic company DHC released a make-up simulation application "Make-up Palette" using AR.

By using this, their customers can try cosmetics casually. This is an application that reproduces various make-up patterns using DHC cosmetics with camera of smartphones and face recognition technology. Eyeshadows, teaks, lipsticks... you can select and simulate cosmetic items and makeup patterns on your face on the smartphone's screen. Even if you change the angle of the camera and expression, the make-up simulation follows them. It is very convenient to compare the faces before and after making-up and decide in advance which colors are suitable for you. When you find your favorite items, you can go DHC's shopping site immediately from the application and buy them. They are using this to send for their customers the latest products, campaigns, and seasonal make-up information also. The downloading is free(iOS/Android).

Custom-made life size robot

Whether for general use or for business use, robots are hot topics in Japan. Therefore, the attraction production company Curiosity started "Chararoid", a custom-made service of character robots.

The concept of this is "to make the anime world exist in reality", CG designers design the exterior of the robots, and the attraction software which they developed independently is used for the motion control. Robot and tablet work together, and it is possible to communicate by video display and touch panel operation. It also has a speech recognition function and can also talk. If you do not like the synthesized voice of the robots, you can order the voice of the voice acter. The flow of communication is managed by the timeline, and it can be linked with BGM, signage, and projection mapping. Its eyes have small displays, and they can express various emotions comically like anime. As for the price they have not disclosed and you have to ask them about it in ordering.