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Almost
everyone has taken photos of once-in-a-lifetime
events only to find out later that the camera focused
not on the people, but on the tree or wall behind
them. This is one of the major frustrations for
amateur photographers, but one they can now put
behind them. Nikon Corporation has become the first
to announce an exciting new technology called Face-priority
Autofocus (AF) that makes it easier to take high-quality,
sharply focused portraits automatically.
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| Sample
image: Subjects as seen on the COOLPIX
7600 camera's color LCD and when using
Nikon's Face-priority AF function |
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Nikon's special digital
detection program scans for facial details to automatically
detect a person's face when subjects are within
typical portrait taking distances. Then, the Face-priority
AF fine tunes the focus on the face area—just
like an experienced photographer. Even if the subject
moves, or as the photographer recomposes the picture,
Face-priority AF will maintain focus on the subject's
face. For now, this feature is available on the
new COOLPIX S1, the COOLPIX 7900, the COOLPIX 5900
and the COOLPIX 7600 compact digital cameras.
Nikon Corporation has succeeded in bringing
this new technology to the market through working
closely with Identix. The incorporation of Identix'
industry-leading facial recognition technology,
FaceIt®, was critical to enabling Nikon's latest
digital photography feature.
The new Face-priority AF function is making cameras
ever more user friendly and capable of producing
better pictures with ease through Nikon built-in
technologies.
*Identix and FaceIt are registered
trademarks of Identix Incorporated.
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Mitsubishi
Kagaku Media (MKM), the company behind the popular
and world-respected Verbatim® recordable media,
released in Japan a new DVD disc series in early
March named BIGAZO, which means "beautiful
image creation" in Japanese.
The BIGAZO series features an extremely
large printing area for its inkjet-printable label,
which is the most popular type with users. "Some
70% of DVD users prefer being able to create original
labels," says an MKM spokesman, "so MKM
answered this consumer need by launching BIGAZO,
a new DVD disc series that allows users to freely
design and print their own labels."
BIGAZO discs come in a wide range of
color variations from all-white to a variety of
five new pastel colors. The print surface is made
up of a newly developed dual printable layer that
speeds drying and ink adherence for a superior-looking
and more durable label.
MKM also released a new version of its
Cine-R DVD Series, which has a pre-printed movie
projector reel motif, to create a greater impression
of a 3D reel, in two available colors—bronze
and steel.
MKM/Verbatim® proprietary manufacturing
technologies are highly respected in the computer
and digital entertainment industries and have earned
an impeccable reputation for low recording error
and high reliability.
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A
realistic driving simulator by Mitsubishi Precision
currently allows government agencies and educational
facilities in Japan to safely train drivers to
handle circumstances such as accidents and dangerous
situations, which cannot be taught on the street.
In December 2004, Mitsubishi Precision held a
three-day seminar in Hong Kong on the uses of
the driving simulator in a program sponsored by
the Institute of Advanced Motorists Hong Kong
to improve driver's education and reduce accidents.
The simulator was introduced to invitees, including
the Transport Department, driving schools and
others in the automotive industry. Many who tried
the simulator noted that it was different from
a game, and expressed particular surprise at the
realism of the accident simulation.
Hong
Kong's largest newspaper found that the simulator
was precise, rich in situational content and realistic,
adding that the equipment would alleviate the
need for driver's safety training to be held on
streets. The Hong Kong car magazine "Mr.
Car" even went so far to say that, "use
of this kind of simulator in Hong Kong would make
the streets safer."
Mitsubishi Precision will continue
to develop simulators for driver safety training,
and make this equipment available to improve driver
skills worldwide.
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In
February 2005, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI)
completed replacement work on the upper and lower
reactor internals of the Ikata Nuclear Power Station
Unit No. 1 of Shikoku Electric Power. The event
was the world's first-of-its-kind, all-in-one-piece
extraction in air and replacement work in pressurized
water reactors (PWR).
To put this accomplishment into perspective,
both the old upper and lower reactor internals had
to be removed and stored in a special cask container
simultaneously to shorten the required work period
and reduce workers' radiation exposure. The work
was aimed at accommodating more control rods for
advanced high burn-up fuel and at preventing damage
to baffle-former bolts by stress corrosion cracking
(SCC), as has occurred overseas.
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The replacement
sections, made entirely of stainless steel, measured
8 meters by 2.8 meters and weighed 100 metric tons
each. When the new reactor internals were installed
in the water-filled reactor vessel, they had to
be placed with extremely high accuracy: about 0.4
mm at the narrowest clearance, which was the same
specification for initial construction. To fulfill
that requirement, MHI newly developed a high-precision
remote-controlled measurement system for underwater
applications and conducted rigorous training in
the new work method.
MHI's new system did all of this while
shortening the required work period and also greatly
reducing workers' radiation exposure.
MHI will leverage its experience and
technology applied at the Ikata power plant to continue
its active pursuit of preventive maintenance for
nuclear reactors, as a way of supporting the safe
operation of nuclear power plants everywhere.
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For
a general trading company like Mitsubishi Corporation,
business depends on reliable transportation from
any point A to point B on earth. That's why, as
China's economy—and export volume—heats
up, it moved to secure improved access to warehousing
and distribution in a new joint venture with Nippon
Express Co., Ltd. The venture is a holding company,
owned 51% by Nippon Express and 49% by Mitsubishi
Corporation. It will finance and manage six of the
partner's transportation subsidiaries now operating
in China, creating an expanded network and improving
quality and services in a country where demand for
distribution services is increasing rapidly.
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their network extends across China. |
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Operations
of the shared facilities are expected to double
in scale within five years. The venture will also
give each partner access to the other's full transportation
infrastructure in China, in all, a distribution
network of 106 terminals in 34 cities covering most
of China, with warehouse space of 250,000m2.
Nippon Express already has the largest
presence in China of any Japanese transportation
company. The company brings specialization in transport
operations as well as its wealth of personnel and
know-how to the new operation. Mitsubishi Corporation
likewise, has transport bases giving it almost nationwide
reach. The companies' operations complement each
other and will enable their individual strengths
to be applied as needed to improve operations.
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Dome-shaped
screens are used for large display systems by
the advertising and entertainment fields, which
require impressive and realistic visuals—to
recreate life-size, 3D dinosaurs, for example.
However, the extreme curvature of a dome screen
presents daunting optical and calibration challenges.
Using an ordinary projector with a dome screen
gives only poor quality, low-resolution images,
but specialized projectors are rare and require
advanced computer-graphic reformatting of each
new program. Companies have tried using multiple
off-the-shelf projectors, to provide seamless
overlapping images, but found alignment to be
time consuming and difficult.
Mitsubishi
Electric has overcome all of these challenges
with a calibration technique it invented for a
new system developed jointly with Mitsubishi Precision.
It requires no expensive reformatting of program
material, and calibration is automatic and fast,
producing a beautiful, wide and natural-looking
picture.
Mitsubishi Electric also applied its
own methods for deforming and overlapping images
and using multiple PCs to convert the original
flat image into a dome image on the fly in real-time.
As a result, customers can project
their computer graphics (CG) contents for flat
screens onto the dome screen without modification.
It offers an immersive visual experience to audiences
by wrapping the image around them as if they were
experiencing it in real life.
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Mitsubishi
Electric already holds the world record for the
longest outdoor LED monitor display. Recently, a
520m2 Mitsubishi
Electric Diamond Vision screen installed in the
home stadium of the U.S. Major League Baseball team
Atlanta Braves was recognized by Guinness World
Records at a special ceremony on March 23. The screen
is over 21m tall and 24m wide, weighs 50 tons and
has more than five million LED lights.
The
Brave's Diamond Vision display is almost three times
the size of the old display, and seeing the replays,
videos and animations on a high definition screen
adds even more excitement to the Turner Field experience.
The new display consists of 266 panels
that each contains 20 lighting units, resulting
in a screen with nearly 5,200,000 LED modules that
can faithfully reproduce one billion colors, and
be clearly seen from almost any viewing angle.
Mitsubishi Electric has installed more
than 100 Diamond Vision screens for sports, entertainment
and advertising use in premier venues across the
country, including Yankee Stadium and the New York
Times Square's first high-definition display.
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Mitsubishi
Estate, a global property developer and owner of
Paternoster Square in London, and Mitsubishi Corporation,
a global trade and investment company, have entered
into a 50:50 joint venture to redevelop Bow Bells
House, a prime office building site owned by Mitsubishi
Corporation, which is ideally positioned in the
City. The existing building, located on Bread Street,
only a couple of minutes on foot from St. Paul's
Cathedral, is to be demolished, followed immediately
by construction of a 20,000 m2 office
building, for which planning consent has already
been granted by the Corporation of London.
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The new building,
which is adjacent to the historic Bow Church, will
retain the historic Bow Bells House name. It is
scheduled for completion in 2007, in time to help
fill an expected acute shortage of large newly built
office space, and, in fact, the partners have already
received a number of approaches from potential tenants.
The new building will comprise seven floors of large
open office space, with retail shops on the ground
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