International Design Competition Osaka 2006
Deadline: October 22, 2006
Industrialization in the 20th century brought us a great deal of material wealth. However, it also caused many global environmental problems, including excessive energy consumption. Moreover, other new challenges have been emerging, such as the collapse of social and technological systems that have long supported our daily lives, the frequent occurrence of disasters and extreme weather events, and the worldwide degradation of natural ecosystems, making our life environment, which should be safe and secured, more unstable and unsafe.
For this reason, there are now growing needs for health, safety and comfort.Meanwhile, the rapid progress of information communication technology throughout the world continues to affect our daily lives, causing drastic changes in people's thinking and their relationships with each other.
Against the background of these present-day social challenges, JDF, in 2006 calls for the world to seek a new relationship between humans and the things around us and to propose innovative design ideas that will help realize advanced human interfaces, which can enhance or perform human functions. In view of the above, we have decided the theme of the International Design Competition Osaka 2006 to be "ROBOT."
The term "ROBOT" here means not only humanoid robots, but also any other tool created to solve present-day social challenges.
We define "ROBOT" as new interfaces that can reduce people's loads and burdens in their daily lives and that help establish more delightful and positive relationships between humans and things. We look forward to design proposals with the concepts and techniques of ergonomic design and universal design incorporated, and we hope these proposals can help make our lives safer and more comfortable, rather than striving for material wealth alone.
www.jdf.or.jp/robot/index.html