Japan has long been the world leader in development of new and imaginative technologies. We look at some of the latest innovations originating in Japan and what they might mean for the rest of us, writes DAVID McNEILL.
MOBILE-PHONE BREATHALYSERS
So you're heading home after a night out, fretting that the pint you drank an hour ago might have tipped you over the limit. No problem. Whip out your mobile, blow hard and wait for your blood-alcohol level to appear onscreen.
The mobile-phone breathalyser has become a popular accessory in South Korea, where consumer electronics giant LG was at one stage selling 1,500 handsets a day, according to Mobile Magazine. But Japanese telecommunications company NTT DoCoMo has come up with its own, slightly Orwellian twist: a videophone system for employers of taxi, bus and truck drivers.
Based on NTT's FOMA high-speed data-communication technology, the system allows head office to call their drivers at random and ask them to blow into a handset which instantly sends back a blood-alcohol read-out. And don't even think about trying to con your employer, warns the company. "Inebriated drivers cannot have someone else take the test for them, because the person's identity is confirmed via the videophone's camera as they take the test."
Could it work in Ireland? With the fourth-highest level of alcohol-related deaths in the EU, perhaps it needs to.
ROBOT HUMAN HELPERS
Robots are so synonymous with Japan that they have become something of a technological cliche. But scrap any futurist fantasies of arriving home to a humanoid machine like Honda's Asimov, waiting for you with the children in bed and a nightcap in its metal hand. Most of the latest robot innovations are more solidly practical, even if their makers still have one eye on the world of popular science-fiction.
Take the Hal, for example - a robot suit named after the deadly ship computer in Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Developed by a company called Cyberdyne (cyberdyne.jp/english/index.html) - another nod to pop culture - the Hybrid Assistive Limb is a sort of mechanical exoskeleton that gives its wearers super-human strength, or helps supplement the strength of the physically challenged.
How far into the future before Hal whirs and clicks its way into our lives? The suit, which works by amplifying the body's electrical impulses, is already available for rent or lease to old people's homes, hospitals and building sites for about €622 a month. The cost of a full-body version - between €60,877 and €121,754 - has, thus far, kept it out of the hands of the individual, but the company plans to begin mass production (400-500 units a year) in October, and has set up a representative office in Amsterdam.
Hal is just one of dozens of similar innovations being churned out by Japan's army of engineers, including robots that sniff out fires, stamp out weeds, lift granny into the bath and help her walk to the shops. Another robot suit created by Tokyo University of Agriculture & Technology helps elderly farmers lift heavy loads.
Japanese firm Tmsuk (tmsuk.co.jp/english/robots.html), meanwhile, has produced the T-53, a three-ton rescue-robot vaguely resembling the machine Sigourney Weaver straps on to fight the alien queen in Aliens. Expect it to sell for about €243,398.
If there is a common theme to all this robotic activity in Japan, it is a shortage of labour. Japan's workforce is ageing faster than anywhere else in the world, the population has already started to fall and the country has so far shunned the most obvious solution: mass immigration. In addition, robotics plays to Japan's traditional strengths: mechanical engineering and computer science. The government is pumping millions into the industry, which it estimates could be worth $26 billion (€16,731 billion) within two years.
So could 2008 be the year of the robot? Cliche or not, expect to see more, soon. If not at the superstore, at least in large institutions.
FLU VACCINATION IN YOUR RICE
Vaccinations could be consigned to the doctor's waste bin if scientists at the University of Tokyo succeed in engineering rice to fend off disease. Working with geneticists and pharmacists, the researchers have developed a strain of rice that includes cholera proteins which, when fed to mice, stimulates the production of cholera antibodies.
The team is focusing on the implications for humans: needle-free inoculations against malaria and a host of other diseases, delivered in your food. Why rice? Because it maintains "immunogenicity" at room temperature for more than 1.5 years, say the researchers, who conclude: "Because they would require neither needles nor refrigeration . . . these rice-based mucosal vaccines offer a highly practical as well as cost-effective strategy against infectious diseases."
WORLD'S FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTER
Long a world-leader in the production of giant computers with head-spinning number-crunching power, Japan was overtaken in 2004 by IBM's American Blue Gene at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. But the title - a source of pride in the world's second-largest economy - could soon be back across the Pacific. The Ministry of Science announced in April that it has allocated 1.1 billion yen for the construction of a computer capable of a staggering 10 quadrillion calculations per second - 73 times faster than the Blue Gene, which can manage a paltry 136.8 trillion. The Japanese monster will be built on a 17,500sq m site on an island off the port city of Kobe.
For clues to what Japan will do with all that computing power, look to its current leading supercomputer, the Earth Simulator in Yokohama, which is used to simulate climate change and other natural phenomena, including the likelihood of disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes.
As the Yokohama computer slips down the rankings, the government is working to market its computing power to the private sector - the operators of the Bullet train recently called on its services to calculate wind resistance at high speed. The Japanese press also reports that the Science Ministry will use its new toy, due in 2012, to simulate the history of the galaxy.
MOBILE VIDEO
Okay, so watching video on the move is no longer the novelty it once was, but if Japan is any indication, this once exotic technology is about to go mainstream. Japanese manufacturers have sold about 20 million mobile phone handsets equipped with digital TV receivers.
Known as 1-seg - because it occupies one segment of the digital TV broadcast spectrum - the format gets a technological shot in the arm this month when US chip-maker Intel starts shipping its Atom processor to Toshiba, Fujitsu and 18 other Japanese companies, designed to bring even sharper high-definition pictures and sound to hand-held devices. Fixed-rate package fees mean that watching videos on your phone no longer costs an arm and a leg. The screens are becoming bigger too, and from this month on, content providers can make programming especially for handsets.
That all sounds too big to be ignored, even in parts of the world that don't love their gadgets quite as much as Japan. Consumer research indicates that those millions of dedicated 1-seggers use their handsets for a quick fix of news and sport results, mainly on the train, bus, and in the office, rather than long, eye-straining sessions of drama or movies.
But will Irish consumers happily squint into pocket-sized screens to watch Coronation Street, Spiderman or a hurling match on the Dart?
Belfast-born tech writer J Mark Lytle, who runs the website Digital World Tokyo, thinks it is possible: "Japan's mobile phone users have embraced 1-seg because it brings added value to their handsets and thus to their customers, something that we think networks on our side of the world will realise sooner rather than later."
GRAVESTONES WITH ONLINE CONNECTIVITY
In Japan, as in Ireland, looking after family graves is a serious business, embedded in centuries of tradition - but one that is being pummelled by the demands of modern life.
Older people lament that their children have increasingly less time to visit graveyard plots and fear that they'll be forgotten once they pass away. So a high-tech undertaker has come up with a solution: connect the graves to the internet.
For about €6,280, a company called Ishinokoe will sell you a memorial stone fitted with a scan-able QR code, essentially a two-dimensional barcode that allows online connectivity. The innovation means long-distance relatives can access the graves remotely, download photos and leave messages to the departed, who will also have a say in how they will be remembered: they can plan the online contents ahead of time. "Someday, hopefully, all graves will look like this," Ishinokoe President Yoshitsugu Fukuzawa told Japanese TV.
CONCRETE MIXERS ON THE MOON
Shimizu Corp, one of Japan's largest construction companies, says it is researching technology that will allow builders to make water-free concrete on the moon.
The company's research department, which specialises in developing materials for use in extreme conditions, will try to produce sand that mimics the properties of dust and rock found on the surface of the moon, which has no water. Commissioned by Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency, the research, which was in hibernation for some years, has been revived with the news that Japan is to help build an international space station.
"We are serious about wanting to build a concrete base on the surface of the moon," Hiroshi Kanamori, the head of the research team told Japan Today.
