The robot, 17 centimeter tall and 130 grams in weight, was forced to climb a 500 meters canyon as a demonstration by Panasonic for its new line of alkaline batteries.

The Evolta (combining “evolution” and “voltage”) batteries can be used to satisfy your climbing robot hunger for energy, with 20 percent more energy than Duracell and Energizer.

The batteries actually hold the Guinness book of records for being the most long lasting alkaline batteries. Panasonic claims that the batteries managed to flash a strobe light 277 times, while the existing alkaline and oxyride battery cells could set off 203 and 255 flashes, respectively.

Video after the break:

The batteries aren’t cheap and cost $5.40 for four in Japan, 15 percent higher than other batteries. They planned to reach more countries in the following months.

The robot accomplished the mission successfully within time of 6 hours and 45 minutes by using 530 meters of rope. Now Tom Cruise won’t have to worry about a stunt double, if he’ll ever want to this again:

Tom Cruise in a typical climbing.

Source: [Mainichi]

More about the Evolta batteries: [Techon]

A new robot is supposed to clean urinals. The engineers at Mertec Engineering, the company that brought us this life-changing invention, claim that the robot can save eight liters of water while cleaning urinals. And it does this in only 10 seconds. If you happen to be in Kobe airport, you can watch the invention in action.

The robot is called “DASUBEE” that after the letters DCBA, which are ACBC backwards. The origin for that name is the reverse process which help the robot clean the urinals. No points on copywriting here.

Anyway, If you want it to help you with your cleaning chores, you should prepare to cough up 1,000,000 Yen, which are like $9,600. Let us save you the calculation, you can buy lot’s of brushes and detergent with this kind of money. In the mean time you can relax with a bunch of robots killing each other or some useless robots.

More: [3yen]

Source (Japanese): [Robot Watch]

The annual Meiwa Electronics annual Stupid Robot Contest, is held every year and the competitors must obey the following rules: the robot must be mechanical, It must be completely useless and it must make people laugh. Loyal readers of Japanite knows already that this can be applied to a lot of Japanese inventions throughout the year, without even a contest.

One of the robots, Papa Robopucho (picture above) is playing flags game with himself and sometime just cries for help. another example is this one, that I hope is inventor knows what it’s doing:

Last year you could see maid robots inspired from maid cafes in Akihabara (inventors probably haven’t heard about the new mom cafes trend), and a child robot that did push-ups.

This is also from last year:

So, What robot will you suggest to the competition? Share with us in the comments.

More info and videos (japanese): [Robot Watch] and [Bacarobo]

and more on the contests in [Meiwa]