One of Nikon's key current goals is to provide new solutions that utilize our cultivated technologies. Here, we introduce some of the challenges our creative designers and development engineers have dedicated themselves to overcoming as they work to deliver Nikon's new solutions including robot vision and riblet processing, their technologies and values to as many people as possible.

Nikon is dedicated to supporting manufacturing and research in plants and laboratories. From microscopes, semiconductors, FPD lithography and industrial equipment to optical processing machines, all of these products pursue ease of use, reliability, and performance, just as Nikon cameras have always done. The end goal is to contribute to a broad spectrum of business expansion opportunities as well as providing solutions to different social issues.

The latest initiatives by the company include dynamic robot vision that goes beyond that of the human eye, and riblet processing that applies microscopic processing inspired by shark skin to a surface for a variety of applications. Both technologies effectively save manpower during the manufacturing process while reducing energy consumption, and are now being developed for mass production.

In-development technologies that were created for business opportunities: these are things you don't normally hear about unless you're a staff member. However, we had been presented with an opportunity to unveil them to the world, so the question "How can we communicate Nikon's technologies and initiatives at this unique event?" became the start of our creative designers' journey on this unprecedented mission.

Nikon's robot vision is a technology that performs its tasks by capturing fast-moving objects and recognizing their shape and material accurately with dynamic vision that is beyond the human eye. Meanwhile, our riblet processing reduces air friction produced on wind turbines and aircraft wings with microscopic surface structures, taking advantage of Nikon's applied optics and precision technologies. Both of these are now under development for practical use.

The slogan the team in charge of developing these cutting-edge technologies adopted is "The real value lies in technology that's really necessary" — not only do they develop advanced technologies, but they also dedicate themselves to making such technologies practical and easy to use.

Our creative designers' mission is to share these development engineers' passion and refine the pure technology and value to something that has broad public appeal. At this time, we needed to provide surprise, expectations, dreams and movement — a feeling of "Wow, we can do all these kinds of things with these new technologies", or "I could use this technology in this way" — that attracts not only the robot and metal processing experts, but also anyone else visiting the exhibition.

Robot vision, which is designed to be employed at a variety of manufacturing sites for such processes as selection, welding and assembly, is a prototype but pursues the same level of perfection as a mass-produced product. The pure white exterior with its organic form that would fit as comfortably in a home as well as a factory, also incorporates advanced technology such as LED light-emitting elements.

We chose domino toppling to demonstrate robot vision at the exhibition. Although we have all probably played this game at least once, it is difficult for a conventional robot to distinguish small dominoes that fall randomly, pick them up accurately, and rearrange them all on their own. We believed this was the best way to express the new possibilities of our robot vision.

However, it was not easy to make the prototype technology move in a way that differed from its original intended use, and errors were unavoidable. We overcame this problem by working speedily as a team, with the creative designers adjusting the shape and creating new movements right next to the development engineers as they were programming. After overcoming numerous problems, the domino toppling was well-received, with many people stopping to watch the fascinating performance.

In the case of riblet processing, our goal was to make a dynamic impact. An object resembling a wind turbine blade towers above the visitors, and at its feet stands a mobile riblet processing robot that will eventually be able to run autonomously while applying surface processing. We placed this huge object and innovative look of the mobile riblet processing machine at the entrance of the Nikon booth to stimulate the imagination of visitors about the society that this technology will bring about.

The very first step to disseminating these new technologies to the world and solving the social issues they address is to let as many people know about their existence in the first place. In this, Nikon's challenge will continue.

*Position and job description are as of the time of the interview, but have been partially revised.