So that’s we are not surprised to see a real battle that was held in Japan between two robot teams. Each of the robots was given a laser gun (don’t worry it was a non-lethal laser) and the teams were programmed to exterminate the over team.

The robots were fighting in Blazer tournament which was held in Fukuoka City, Japan. The robots are actually models built by hobbyists, so no actual robots were harmed in the process if you worried to well-being of the SkyNet messengers. The tournament was held on the surface of a model city and a smoke generator was even used, to get that nice futuristic and frightening effect.

You also get the video:

More information and images (translated): 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]

Japanese people are crazy about robots. There are helper robots for lifting cargo, receptions robots, and of course fun robots like Sony’s Aibo (discontinued) or Honda’s Asimo. But researches in Toshiba have finally found the most important task for sophisticated robots to handle: change TV channels.

Meet ApriPoko, a voice operated robot with remote control capabilities for multiple home appliances. The robot sits in your living room quietly and try to detect Infra Red beams around him.

When it detects such beams, he kindly asks if you like him to learn this operation from the remote you are currently using. When you answer him something like “I’ve turned on the stereo”, it will memorize the commands and you’ll be able to command him to do this again, using only your voice.

So what do we got here in the end? a 5lb robot, that his only purpose in life is to respond to Japanese commands on their home equipment. It still in development, so no word on pricing yet, but you can assume it will be in the hundreds of dollars range. Our guess? Japanese shoppers will buy this like crazy, even they already have a hyper-remote control that can send commands to the entire systems in the house.

More on [Akihabara News]