Japan at CeBIT
Japan, the CeBIT partner country in 2017, is bringing a wealth of innovations to the IT fair.
Germany. Japan leads the way. At Haneda airport in Tokyo, visitors are already being welcomed by robots. Rather than being programmed with a simple ‘hello’, they are interactive. The Emiew3 humanoid robots can already process voices and images and respond to them. They answer questions and even accompany tourists to the required gate. On the way to the hotel visitors can see airport staff effortlessly handling items of luggage. The explanation lies in the use of exoskeleton suits equipped with sensors that pick up nerve signals from the wearer and support the body movements through artificial limbs. The producer, Cyberdyne, has also been operating in Germany since 2013. Cyberdyne Care Robotics has established its headquarters in Bochum. It is now supporting the rehab processes for patients with spinal cord injuries and increasing numbers of stroke patients with the help of sensory feedback exoskeletons.
The professor and his robot
Japan not only wants to convert the economy to Industrie 4.0, the tech-savvy country also wants to digitalize society with the government’s Society 5.0 programme. At the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover in March, Japan is presenting itself as the 2017 partner country with the largest national pavilion in the history of the IT fair. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chancellor Angela Merkel will be attending the opening. And people are eagerly awaiting the appearance of Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro at the CeBIT Global Conferences 2017. The director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory in the Department of Adaptive Machine Systems at the University of Osaka has, among other things, developed a humanoid robot in his own image. Ishiguro is focusing his innovative work on the future of a technically controlled world, and one of the questions he is asking is: ‘Will humans become a discontinued model?
