Imagination Factory

Toyota has announced that it'll sell people its adorable  Kirobo Mini "communication partner robot" from the end of this year. Would-be owners can snag one from a series of low-volume pre-sales at Toyota dealerships in Tokyo as well as Aichi Prefecture. Otherwise, they'll have to wait until 2017 for the weeny 'bots, which are designed to sit in your car's cup holders, to reach store shelves across the country. If you're wondering where you've seen this tech before, don't worry, Toyota sent one into space to  hang around the ISS  a while ago.  Kirobo Mini is intended to offer "companionship" to lonely drivers on long journeys, offering "casual conversation" in standard Japanese. The unit will turn its head to whoever is speaking, nod in agreement and even attempt to analyze your emotions with a built-in camera. That way, when you gripe about your terrible new boss at work, Kirobo will adjust its manner of sp...

Dyson teased the event by sending out tiny, sharp motor parts to journalists (including  this one ), but now we get to see the rest of the thing. Unsurprisingly, the company's first foray into beauty is, perhaps predictably, a hairdryer. The Supersonic has all the design hallmarks of a Dyson: it's all circular and smooth, metallic with a splash of loud color. Compared to everything  that's come before it , however, it's so... small.  Four years in development, the company spent $71 million (and took four years) to make its hair dryer, with the sort of specifications and research backstory of a car. The press release explains the 600 prototypes , over 100 patents pending, and a cast of 103 engineers that worked on it. It helps to explain the price ($400), but even salon-level hair dryers hover around the $300 mark. Founder James Dyson reckons existing dryers can be "heavy, inefficient, and make a  racket ." "By looking at th...

Base image: Medhi_san Alphabet's intent to get rid of Boston Dynamics hasn't affected its other robotics programs, from the looks of it. On Japan's New Economic Summit stage, the Alphabet X lab (formerly Google X) subsidiary SCHAFT unveiled a new bipedal unit that's capable of climbing stairs, carrying a loaded barbell on its "head" unit, laterally stepping through a row of seats at a soccer stadium and even maintaining balance when a section of pipe is placed under its feel. IEEE Spectrum writes that this was part of former Google exec Andy Rubin's keynote at the event, but that the debut wasn't part of a product announcement or "indication of a specific product roadmap." So it looks like the clip of the anonymous bot navigating a rocky beach in the video below is indicative of the project's lonely future. But hey, maybe director Christopher Nolan can put it to use in a sequel for Interstellar -- the biped strikes awfully similar that...