GreenTech Geek: Godnology

I believe that God (if you believe in such … heck, if I believe in such) sometimes reaches us through our own technology. I call it godnology.

Take, for example, the use of advanced automotive airbag technology to send a certain message to a certain, shall we say, prick.  Check it out, after the jump …

Maybe you have a good example of godnology at work. Maybe you’ve been a victim of it. Maybe you’ve reaped its delicious benefits.

From time to time, I’ll post other examples of this mysterious force from the great beyond.

Until next week …

GreenTech Geek: Another Freaky Japanese Robot

This is Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. He is about to be made very happy.

How time does seem to fly when you’re having fun.  A year ago, in one of my first GreenTech Geek columns for TwL, I wrote about Freaky Japanese Robots that would play the violin, administer your medicine, respond to your touch … pretty much anything short of wiping your behind.

Well, fair readers, on this one-year anniversary as your GreenTech Geek, I have discovered plans for an even stranger, freakier Japanese robot.

See it … after the jump …

[Oh, by the way, I know I promised a review of the Strava mobile bicycling app this week.  That’s going to have to wait until … well … until I feel like writing a review.]

I’m Kibo!  (Or am I?) Just imagine what my luscious lips can do …

Meet Kibo — or the provisional Kibo.  Kibo is just a filler name for what will become a 13-inch-high humanoid robotic buddy to accompany Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata when he heads to the International Space Station next summer.

Japanese technicians are reaching out to the public for ideas on what to call “Kibo” and how, ultimately, he (she?) will look and behave.  But their general goals include giving the Japan-o-naut a life-like companion who he can converse with in Japanese and maybe, therefore, not feel so homesick.

And Japan is rolling out some big guns to bring the little android to life. Toyota, Robo Garage Inc., and the Japanese Aerospace Exploratory Agency (yup, you guessed it — their version of NASA) are joining forces on the effort.

More Kibo prototypes.

You can check out more about the strange project at a special Web site that, if nothing else, features some of the creepiest but coolest background music you’ve ever heard:   http://kibo-robo.jp/en/.

And here’s a story from the UK paper The Telegraph that tries to make some sense of it all.

So, while we wait to see what the Kibo robot will be called and what it will look like in the end, enjoy these pictures of some of the designs prototypes that have been proposed so far.

I’m Cartoon Kibo … and I got it all going on.

I told you … I’m Kibo! And that homo sapien over there looks pretty delicious to these luscious lips …

“My baby’s going places…”

Until next week …