#vstone

[stevebattle]

DanBoard The Robot (2014), by Vstone, Osaka. "Robo Danbo is a robot version of the character "Danbo" from the popular comic "Yotsubato!". Equipped with 11 servo motors throughout its body, it can perform various expressions such as walking, dancing, and tilting its head. It is also equipped with functions that allow for rich expressions, such as making sounds according to movements and lighting up the LEDs in both eyes."

[rihkal]

VisiON 4G by Vstone (2007)

[stevebattle]

OmniCovered (2004) by Takeshi Maeda, Vstone, Osaka. OmniCovered is a bipedal humanoid competition robot developed for ROBO-ONE 6. Instead of aluminium sheet metal, it has a fibreglass reinforced plastic (FRP) frame, with a white exterior made of laminated ABS resin. It uses new Hitec HSR-5995TG ultra-torque robot servos, and the image processing required the faster Renesas 40MHz 32-bit SH-2 CPU. Its chest bears the autograph of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, who was impressed when he saw another of Takeshi Maeda's robots in Tokyu Hands (東急ハンズ, Tōkyū Hanzu), a chain of Japanese hobby stores.

"Saturday, qualifying round. Dual sword fighting, image processing balloon popping, and 15cm climbing were all successful, but I ended up in 2nd place. I lost to A-Do again… If I think about it, I was also arrogant, thinking that if all the demonstrations were successful, along with the monocoque exterior, I would be able to qualify for first place. … Sunday, main game. He was suddenly hit by the robot equipped with the Dynamixel servos (ROBOTIS) that I was afraid of, and was defeated in the first round." – Takeshi Maeda, Robotan Production Diary.

At ROBO-ONE 6, OmniCovered came 2nd in the qualifying rounds, but lost in the first game of the finals.

[stevebattle]

Robovie "Dai-chan" (2011) by Vstone, Osaka, Japan. A design variant on Robovie-R3 was chosen to be Osaka's robot industry PR ambassador. "The robot "Daichan" was created in August 2011 as a robot industry PR ambassador for Osaka City, based on Robovie-R ver.3. We will utilize Robovie-R3's performance, expressiveness, design, etc. to promote Osaka as a city of robots." – Vstone.

[stevebattle]

Androvie by Vstone, Osaka (2011). To create a robot that can connect to the network at a low cost, Androvie has a smartphone for a head. The 'Robomara-full' marathon is a (42.195km) running competition for bipedal robots, organised by Vstone. Androvie won the 2nd Robomara held at the Asia Pacific Trade Center (ATC) in December 2011, with a time of 45 hours, 48 minutes, and 7 seconds. This beats the record from the first Robomara (54 hours, 57 minutes, and 50 seconds) set by Robovie-PC.

[stevebattle]

OmniHead (2003) by Takeshi Maeda, Vstone, Osaka. OmniHead is a bipedal humanoid competition robot, developed for the ROBO-ONE 4 contest.  Specialist servos for robots had not been yet been developed, so it's based on the SANWA ERG-VB designed for radio-controlled cars. The CPU is a 16MHz Hitachi H8.

"Around August 2002 I went to see the 2nd ROBO-ONE tournament and started to think it would be much more fun to participate than to watch. The current idea is as follows. It will use radio-controlled servos; Initially, I'll use the servos as is, but eventually I would like to control the motor current myself from the internal potentiometer value. Start with 6 degrees of freedom x 2 on one leg, add 2 degrees of freedom at the waist, and add 2 degrees of freedom on each arm with 4 degrees of freedom. I want to make the knee and ankle front and rear axes double joints to create a 'soft-body robot.' … It's challenging to participate in Robo-One because I'm so busy with work and a crying creature comes to my house at night, but I ended up being able to spend about 1.5 days out of my three-day weekend working on the robot. … I was able to attach an omnidirectional camera and called it "omni-head." – Takeshi Maeda, Robotan Production Diary.

In August 2003 at ROBO-ONE 4, OmniHead came 2nd in the preliminary round and 2nd place in the final, runner-up to A-Do.

[stevebattle]

Testujin 28-go (2005) by Robo Creation, Vstone, and Robo-Garage. Tetsujin 28-gō (鉄人28号 or "Iron Man No. 28") is a 1956 manga by Mitsuteru Yokoyama about the adventures of Shotaro Kaneda, who controls a giant robot named Tetsujin 28.

"In response to my proposal to create Tetsujin as an actual robot, President Yamato of Vstone, who accepted the role of publisher and project leader, said, "If we can get the consent of the copyright holder, let's try." Yes, robots are produced in small quantities, and there is no relationship with the copyright holder, and the rights to famous characters are often held by major clients, so it is difficult to imagine that it will be easy to obtain the consent of the copyright holder. I was in a situation. I immediately created a project proposal and entered into negotiations with the copyright owner in a situation that was more like a face-to-face encounter than a proposal. After several exchanges, the copyright owner said, "It is difficult to conclude a new contract for such a small project." Those words made me freeze up in an instant. However, after that, "the live-action version of Tetsujin 28-go will be shown next year. Would you like to tie up with us for that promotion?" It sounds like a dream. The project, which simply wanted to turn Iron Man into an actual robot, was praised as an interesting way to create a buzz for the movie. From my point of view, on the contrary, this movie exists to promote robots. However, there was one "absolute condition" that had to be carried out. Iron Man's appearance has to look like what is shown in the movie. My dream was not to be the original Ironman, but to be a "modernized Ironman." If you accept this "absolute condition", you will have the best environment for planning. Of course, I readily agreed, and we were able to commercialize the idea." – Susumu Kanei, anime version Tetsujin, Robo Creation.

[stevebattle]

Mecanum Rover (2013) by Vstone, Osaka. The Mecanum Rover uses mecanum wheels to generate movement forward, backward, turning, and tracking sideways, depending on the speed and rotation direction of each wheel. With rollers oriented 45° to the wheel axle and wheel plane, each wheel produces a force perpendicular to the roller axle. By spinning different sets of wheels in opposite directions, the combined force vectors allow vehicle motion in almost any direction and rotation.