Two-legged robots battle for supremacy at the the Robo-One Convention in Tokyo. Very fun video. The robots has to be built from scratch by amateurs. Also see ROBO-ONE: Grand Championship Competition @ IREX (with full video of final match).
Related: LEGO Sumo Robotic Championship – Northwest FIRST Robotics Competition – Making Robots from Trash – Robot Dreams – Toyota Robots
The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities provides another estimate of the top universities. The methodology is far ideal however I still find it interesting. The various attempts to rank schools can provide a general idea of impact of various institutions (though the measures are fairly crude). Still a sensible picture (especially at the country level) can emerge. And the various rankings should be a able to track shifts in the most influential institutions and relative country strength over time. How quickly those rankings track changes will vary depending on the measures used. I would imagine most will lag the “real” changes as it is easy to imagine many measures that would lag. Still, as I have said before, I expect the USA will lose in relative ranking compared to China, India, Japan, Singapore, Mexico…
The ranking methodology used here weighed rankings in: Jiao Tong academic rankings, Essential Science Indicators, Google Scholar, Alexa (a measure of web site visits to universities) and The Times Higher World University Rankings.
Country representation of the top universities (number of top schools in each country):
| location | Webometrics Top 100 |
Jiao Tong Top 101 |
% of World Population |
% of World GDP* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 53 | 54 | 4.6% | 30.4% |
| Germany | 10 | 5 | 1.3 | 6.3 |
| Canada | 8 | 4 | 0.5 | 2.5 |
| United Kingdom | 6 | 10 | 0.9 | 5.0 |
| Australia | 3 | 2 | 0.3 | 1.6 |
| Japan | 1 | 6 | 2.0 | 10.3 |
| The rest of Europe | 16 | 13 | ||
| Brazil | 1 | 0 | 2.8 | 1.8 |
| Mexico | 1 | 0 | 1.6 | 1.7 |
| Israel | 0 | 1 | 0.1 | 0.3 |
* IMF, World Economic Outlook Database, September 2006 (2005 data)
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The Toyota iUnit personal transport. Time named it a Best Inventions 2005. I can’t find much new on the progress made since then.
Related: Toyota Partner Robots – Electric Cars
Great report – The Atlas of Ideas: How Asian innovation can benefit us all by Charles Leadbeater and James Wilsdon:
| Year | China | France | Germany | Japan | Korea | UK | US | EU-15 |
| 1995 | 2.05 | 6.09 | 7.62 | 8.65 | 0.79 | 8.88 | 33.54 | 34.36 |
| 1998 | 2.90 | 6.48 | 8.82 | 9.42 | 1.41 | 9.08 | 31.63 | 36.85 |
| 2001 | 4.30 | 6.33 | 8.68 | 9.52 | 2.01 | 8.90 | 31.01 | 36.55 |
| 2004 | 6.52 | 5.84 | 8.14 | 8.84 | 2.70 | 8.33 | 30.48 | 35.18 |
Excellent reading, the report is full of useful information I have not been able to obsorb yet.
Related: Diplomacy and Science Research – The World’s Best Research Universities – Engineering the Future Economy – Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data – USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates – Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and Engineers
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A number of Japanese Universities are creating open courseware, in cooperation with MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative (which has spawned the OCW Consortium).
Osaka University OpenCourseWare offers courses in English including: Theory in Materials Science | Fluid-Solid Multiphase Flow
Kyoto University OpenCourseWare aims to:
Many of the courses are available in Japanese, some are available in English, including: Applied Pharmacology
Tokyo Tech OpenCourseWare courses include: Advanced Signal Processing – Guided Wave Circuit Theory and Mixed Signal systems and Integrated Circuits.
The Nagoya University OpenCourseWare brings free courseware to the Internet. Currently several courses are available in English including, Basics of Bioagricultural Sciences. They aim to post 25 courses initially.
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Today more and more locations are becoming viable for world class research and development. Today the following have significant ability: USA, Europe (many countries), Japan, Canada, China, Brazil, Singapore, Israel, India, Korea and Australia (I am sure I have missed some this is just what come to mind as I type this post) and many more are moving in that direction.
The continued increase of viable locations for significant amounts of cutting edge research and development has huge consequences, in many areas. If paths to research and development are blocked in one location (by law, regulation, choice, lack of capital, threat of significant damage to the career of those who would choose such a course…) other locations will step in. In some ways this will be good (see below for an explanation of why this might be so). Promising new ideas will not be stifled due to one roadblock.
But risks of problems will also increase. For example, there are plenty of reasons to want to go carefully in the way of genetically engineered crops. But those seeking a more conservative approach are going to be challenged: countries that are acting conservatively will see other countries jump in, I believe. And even if this didn’t happen significantly in the area of genetically engineered crops, I still believe it will create challenges. The ability to go elsewhere will make those seeking to put constraints in place in a more difficult position than 50 years ago when the options were much more limited (It might be possible to stop significant research just by getting a handful of countries to agree).
Debates of what restrictions to put on science and technology research and development will be a continuing and increasing area of conflict. And the solutions will not be easy. Hopefully we will develop a system of diplomacy that works, but that is much easier said than done. And the United States will have to learn they do not have the power to dictate terms to others. This won’t be an easy thing to accept for many in America. The USA will still have a great deal of influence, due mainly to economic power but that influence is only the ability to influence others and that ability will decline if diplomacy is not improved. Diplomacy may not seem to be a science and engineering area but it is going to be increasingly be a major factor in the progress of science and engineering. Continue reading
Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University produces a ranking of the top universities annually (since 2003). The methodology used focuses on research (publications) and faculty quality (Fields and Nobel awards and citations). While this seems a very simplistic ranking it still provides some interesting data: highlights from the 2006 rankings of Top 500 Universities worldwide include:
Country representation in the top schools:
| location | Top 101 | % of World Population |
% of World GDP | % of top 500 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 54 | 4.6% | 28.4% | 33.4% |
| United Kingdom | 10 | 0.9 | 5.1 | 8.6 |
| Japan | 6 | 2.0 | 11.2 | 6.4 |
| Canada | 4 | 0.5 | 2.4 | 8.0 |
| The rest of Europe | 18 | 4.4 | ||
| Australia | 2 | 0.3 | 1.5 | 3.2 |
| Israel | 1 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 1.4 |
Update: see our post on 2007 best research universities results
Top 10 schools:
Device uses waves to “print” on water surface
Ok I don’t exactly understand the practical advantages of this but it is cool.
This hardly seems impressive compared to the growth of Google say. However the amounts of money for global R&D are huge and so changes as less dramatic than other areas. Still this is significant and seems likely to continue to move in this direction.
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Toyota Announces Overview of “Toyota Partner Robot”
Read posts about the Toyota Productions System (TPS) on the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.
Others are making progress on human like robots including Sony and Honda. See Sony QRIO Robots in action in this flash video below:
And read more about Honda Robots: ASIMO and P3.