A visit to
Miraikan (the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation) has been on my ToDo-list for quite some time, and today was the day. ;)
The museum is located in Daiba near Tokyo Bay, and can be reached from Shimbashi by Yurikamome train.
After paying the 500 yen entrance fee, you enter into a world of very interesting technique and science.
You see, Miraikan is a science museum with the words "Hands-on Approach" plastered all over the place. It features a multitude of exhibits, fielding things like robotics, the Internet (complete with a physical demonstration of how it works), day-to-day life, environmental issues, chemistry (with labs and everything), robotics and much more, but it's the robotics I want to talk about today.
You see, for as long as there has been technology which enables us to mechanise things like fabrication, robots in their purest form have been existing as well, and technically, a robot is "A machine used to perform jobs automatically, which is controlled by a computer" (according to the Cambridge Online Dictionary.
But who would like to have a robot which can do nothing except painting a piece of metal, save for the automobile industry? Exactly.
So, Westinghouse made the first humanoid robot back in the 1930's, called
Elektro (yes, I know; DaVinci designed humanoid robots back in the 15th century, but I don't recall him ever building one), which could do limited things by today's standards, but was very advanced back then.
Right, back to the now. Technology has come a long way since then, and one of the most well known humanoid robots is Honda's
Asimo; a two-legged walking robot, which is able to see what's going on around it, and able to interact with humans.
There are 30 of those around today, and they cost around a million to make.
You've probably seen clips of it on YouTube or regular television, but there's nothing like the real thing, right? Right. Therefore, one of them is set up in Miraikan.
There are two demonstrations every day, as Asimo's running time is still somewhat limited; 40 minutes to an hour. You can't (for obvious reasons) touch the bot either, but you can get front row seats and see it run around, talk, listen and interact with the presenter on stage, just a couple of meters away.
It's amazing to see, and you'll have to keep reminding yourself that this walking, talking, dancing and running humanoid over there is still a machine, instead of a human being in a space suit. ;)
Quite different to what Kraftwerk shows as well.
This is truly one of the highlights of the Miraikan Museum, and well worth the visit.
After spending a good 4 hours at Miraikan, we decided to walk towards Daiba, where we ran into the Sony equivalent of Miraikan, albeit less spectacular. ;)
However, the Sony-exhibit was interesting enough to hang around for another two hours; a very scientific day, you might say.
Shot some nice pictures of Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge and Fuji TV's characteristic building as well.
Tomorrow, we head for Yokohama; Robert hasn't seen Yokohama's Chinatown yet, and Martijn, Yoeri and Willem haven't seen Yokohama at all, so I get to play guide tomorrow.
Should be fun.
Cheers, K.