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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

ACE08 - Entertainment in Dining

Chief manager Shuntaro Yamazaki (NEC Central Research Laboratory) showed in his keynote “Information and Communication Technologies for Food and Entertainment “an application that can be used as a social icebreaker at large social gatherings, “Active Avatar”.
Entertainment in Dining - Keynote at ACE 2008
People can, instead of shyly shuffling around in corners, get an idea of another person’s hobbies and other data, which will make it easier to start off a conversation. (Each attendee has a location tag containing personalized data) Seeing the presentation I also think that the cheers joy of being able to explore such a system together would me a major icebreaker in itself.

Shuntaro Yamazaki also showed the words first sommelier robot. It can look at foods such as wine and cheese and give information about what it is and what kinds of nutrients it contains. (It looks at the texture and color etc.) The robot itself looked familiar to me. I think I saw it at ACE 2006 in Hollywood, so I’m going through through my pictures from that event. Ah yes! The child caring robot NEC showed! It was definitely lovable!
Entertainment in Dining - Keynote at ACE 2008 The sweetest robot ever



Before going to dinner we got a demonstration of how food samples are made by Kousei Kitayama (Iwasaki Co., Ltd).
. You know the ones that are shown outside restaurants in Japan and are so practical since one as a non-Japanese speaker can point at them and know exactly what to get! I have been wondering for a long time how they are done, and it is quite a craft. Here are pictures of how to make lettuce. It is all plastic, and the temperature has to be exact.

How to make food samples for display
Lettuce, making a food sample IMG_7172