The University of Tokyo Komaba Research Campus Open House was held from May 31st to June 1st, 2019. This is an annual event held by the Institute of Industrial Science and the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology. Some demonstrations of our research in the Inami-Hiyama Laboratory were open to the public, allowing many people to directly experience the fruits of our work.

Our research covers a wide range of themes from the scalability of the human body to the cognition process of our brain to unravel the mechanism of our body, all of which are based on our main vision of the “JIZAI BODY”. “MetaLimbs”, for example, enables one to control robot arms mounted on the body as one pleases by using one’s feet, and “MagniFinger” provides extended vision and haptics to perceive minute structures by equipping one’s finger with a microscope. We aim to realize physical abilities such as these, which an ordinary human cannot acquire.

In addition, “ExLeap” creates out-of-body experience and teleportation, “Optical Camouflage” is a technology that wraps everything in a special transparent fabric just like an invisibility cloak, and “LevioPole” produces the sensation of flying. The many visitors, including both children and adults, enjoyed coming into contact with our various research themes through these novel experiences, making this event very lively throughout the two days.

This event not only created the opportunity for a wide range of people beyond the domain of researchers to experience the fruits of our research, but also brought out precious feedback for the future development of our work. We will continue to make efforts to create even more amazing human abilities of the future.

Text:Takeshi Funatsu (MA Student, Inami-Hiyama Lab)
Photo:Naoki Okamoto (MA Student, Inami-Hiyama Lab)
Proofreading: David Buist (Project Senior Specialist)