Chou Chou electric butterfly in a jar

[From Coolest Gadgets; more information and a 0:38 minute video are available at Helium and Japan Trend Shop]

ChouChou Electric Butterfly

by Mark R
[July 28, 2010]

I saw this the other day, and I’m not certain why I didn’t report on it then. Normally, I’m all over the cool robot gadgets.

I then watched the video […]. Not to be a spoiler, but it features a butterfly in a jar. If you’ve ever put a butterfly in a jar, then you know how it moves when you strike the top. That is what you will see in this video, except the butterfly is not real.

This is the ChouChou Electric Butterfly, and it apparently has some AA batteries in the jar lid that give it the power to “flap” from place to place. I’m guessing that if you let it out of the jar, it would not fly away.

Still, I’m darned impressed with this technology. We’ve discussed how technology often imitates nature with projects like the RoboSwift artificial bird technology. It looks like we are one step in perfecting the robot butterfly.

This ChouChou was on display at the Tokyo Toy Show, and it will actually be sold to people like you and me in September. It will probably only have a Japanese release, which means those of us outside the Land of the Rising Sun will probably need to check the Japan Trend Shop.

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