Category: Projects

WebController for V-Sido Connect

WebController for V-Sido Connect is a development platform for humanoid robot remote control, built on top of V-Sido, a robot control platform provided by Asratec Corp.

Company: Asratec Corp.
Development: Atomos Design Co., Ltd, Robust Inc.

The platform is built 100% with web technology, made it easy for the web developers to integrate V-Sido with web services. As a consultant, I helped them design the platform and the API, designed and developed the default 3D web UI. The system evolved to be used with SoftBank Robotics’s Pepper robot and used in the experiments in the airport and nursing home.

Architecture

Asratec developed a robot controller board called V-Sido Connect that robot developers can use V-Sido on their robots easily by embedding the board and connecting to servo motors. V-Sido Connect connects to internet through Bluetooth. In WebController, we developed an Android app that communicates with V-Sido Connect, which also works as a WebRTC node that receives the remote control commands and pass them over to the robot through V-Sido Connect. The app also provides the video from the phone camera,

Communication

I assessed multiple web-based communication protocols including HTTP and WebSockets and selected WebRTC, since we needed real-time video communication. Also to assure the real-time control, TCP based protocol such as HTTP was not well suited, since TCP guarantees the delivery and the order of every packet, which will cause the lag in the control. WebRTC’s data communication is built on top of UDP. We used PeerJS which is a us library for WebRTC. But PeerJS by default did not provide the switch for delivery and order guaranty. So I had to modified the code of the library to make the smooth real-time control happen. WebRTC requires broker service and we used SkyWay from NTT Communications.

Also the smoothness of the control depends on the latency added by the network. We tested 128 different connection topology within 4G networks of 3 major mobile careers and the landline fixed network. Interestingly, we were able to achieve the latency target in mobile-to-mobile setup, while there were more latency added with landline. Mobile network was better at latency even at the time of 4G.

3D UI

We wanted the default UI to be in 3D, so we used WebGL to implement an UI that user can control the robot by dragging a virtual figure to change the posture. There was no handy Inverse Kinematics (IK) library for JavaScript / WebGL, so I had to implement IK using JavaScript on my own. The UI also showed the video from the phone.

tab

tab was a mobile app released in 2012 to bookmark the real world locations and activities. Gained 800K DL and selected as the Apple App Store Japan Best of 2012. The service is already closed.

Company: Tonchidot Corp.

tab was developed as the successor of SekaiCamera, one of the first AR application for smartphones. SekaiCamera was a CGM social service that users can post the tweet-like text tied to specific geolocation. SekaiCamera surprised the market and gained total of 3MM DL. Though the app failed to provide sticky value and the active users were at 10K.

I assessed the UX of SekaiCamera and identified the fundamental issue. It was simply not providing interesting contents. We evaluated what kind of customers will have the incentive to provide quality content to our service. With SekaiCamera, we had partnerships with real estate information service and local government, both having economic incentive to provide location based information. We came up with the concept of “Interest to Action” to drive the users to take action such as to eat or to go to the real location based on the information. But the customers were not fond of these contents, because they were basically advertisements. We recognized that we also need to involve content curators who can add the context to the information and curate them into contents. We formed dedicated teams to form the partnership with local business owners, and to form the community of curators. I contacted ~300 bloggers myself and formed a community of 200 curators. We also renewed the UI. We maintained the iconic camera view, but not as the first view. We turned the first view into the list of “tab”, stream of location information curated by topics. We also designed the location information as a bubble so that we can provide large image and associate with the specific location at the same time. Users can pick the location information and put it into their own tab. Using geofencing technology, the app will notify the user if they get close to the location they added to their tab.

The renewed app gained 800K DL, and also very high MAU conversion of 50%. Though the app failed to monetize. The main reason is the failure to monetize. The company tried to monetize by sending the users to the location and activities (e.g. eating, shopping). Similar model works for online commerce. But for the real commerce, it was difficult to generate enough transaction to monetize.

Will AI Destroy Us? 100 year story of how computer is becoming a god

Publisher: Diamond Inc.

In early 2015, Sota Furuya, a publishing agent and a friend of mine reached out to me about a project to publish a book about the history of IT/computer. It was something I was enthusiastic since my teenage, so I decide to accept the offer.

In the first meeting with the editor Yuto Ichikawa, we discussed the structure of the book, and we came up with the idea to have the novel part which Mari, a college student in 2030 to explore the actual history of AI. At the same period I watched the movie “Imitation Game” which is a biography of Alan Turing, the inventor of the concept of the computer today, but ended up killing himself by biting a poisoned apple. It gave me a strong impression and gave me an idea to tell the story of AI development using the metaphor of holy bible, as a story of humanity with sin to await the arrival of the final judgement and to return to the heaven.

I was obsessed with this idea, and structured the book in seven chapters.

  1. Light of the creation and the paradise lost: Invention of computer by Alan Turing and John con Neumann
  2. Noah’s ark: Invention of microprocessor, Moor’s law and the invention of personal computer as a media to augment human ability
  3. Tower of Babel: Evolution of Internet as a global platform over the cloud
  4. Tablet of commandments: Rise of the smartphone
  5. Nights of the holy grail: Deep learning and the search for Natural General Intelligence
  6. Millennial kingdom: A world with AI and the end of Modern age
  7. Final judgement: Will AI have it’s mind

The book was published in March 2016, the month when AlphaGo, DeepMind’s Go-playing AI defeated the human Champion. The book was well received helped by the timing, became the amazon.co.jp category best seller, No.1 in the science & technology category in Yaesu Book Center a flagship book store in Tokyo, won Rakuten Technology Award 2016 Ruby Prize, selected as one of the best in the science & technology category by Daikanyama Tsutaya Books.

freebit mobile

A MVNO in Japan that delivered vertically integrated experience from the network to the hardware to the services. Currently rebranded to TONE mobile.

TONE mobile
Japan Good Design Award 2014

I was a member of strategic design team, which designed everything about this network operator from up to bottom. There were myself and Takashi Ogawa. We designed the corporate identity, visual language, website, apps and services (IP phone, media manager, Android home), printed materials, merchandising materials such as paper bag and package.

Visual identity

We designed the visual identity including the corporate and service logo. The company has been working on the R&D of Machine-2-machine networking technology. The CEO provided the mission statement of “Building the future by Internet technology frictionless as silk”. We started from creating a symbol, and we came up the idea of cocoon. Cocoon is the source of silk, where the future comes out, and also the shape represents 2 connected nodes seamlessly. We chose the font “Avenir Next” as the main font and the base of corporate logo. Avenir means “future” in French. It’s a font inspired by famous “Futura” font developed in Bauhaus. Avenir Next is a version of Avenir optimized for digital typography, and the modification was made by a Japanese font grapher Akira Kobayashi. It was a choice to present the company’s willingness as a Japanese company to influence the global industry with digital technology.