A mikan farmer handles a wheelbarrow with an E-Cat Kit on May 20 in Yuasa, Wakayama Prefecture. (Takahiro Takizawa)
YUASA, Wakayama Prefecture As the aspiring robot designer slogged away loading mikan fruit into wheelbarrows, it occurred to him that surely there had to be a less exhausting way to do it.
“Transferring mikan was tough, and I remember thinking if I could do something to make the process easier,” says Mizuhito Terashima, founder of CuboRex, a Tokyo-based startup that has developed a system to electrify wheelbarrows for agricultural and engineering work. He hails from Yuasa, Wakayama Prefecture.
Mikan farmers in Wakayama and Ehime prefectures and other clients across Japan are embracing the E-Cat Kit, which can be used to modify various types of carts, to move loads more easily.
A Historic Academic Year
Dear MSU Community,
Spring is here, Bobcats, and we are at the conclusion of an academic year like no other in the last hundred springs.
We inaugurated this year in early August, treading into the new and ever-changing territory of a pandemic where innovation and adaptation were daily necessities. It was a time of uncertainty and anxiety for all of us.
And yet, on the morning of the first day of classes, I heard the roar of our heating plant s steam whistle and knew then that everything was going to be well.
The tradition of blowing the campus whistle at the start and the end of each semester