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The MicroNano Exposition Returns to a Growing Trend with a Strong Showing in 2010

July 28–30, 2010
Tokyo Big Sight, East Hall 5/6
ROBOTECH Exhibition on Next-Generation Service Robot Manufacturing Technologies
21 Exhibition Micromachine/MEMS<Concurrent events> 16th International Micromachine/Nanotech Symposium, TIA-NMEMS Symposium, and more
(SURTECH 2010 Exhibition on Surface Technology held concurrently)
stThe micromachine exposition MicroNano 2010 was held at Tokyo Big Sight on July28–30, 2010. This year’s exposition welcomed more than 14,000 visitors over thethree-day event, an increase of 15% over last year’s total, and occupied 349 exhibit
spaces, up approximately 10% over the previous year. With no let-up in the severe
economic climate, this performance validates the great effort spent to recover fromlast year’s decline in attendance.
MicroNano 2010 featured the first inclusion of ROBOTECH, an exhibition
highlighting manufacturing technologies for service robots. The new addition
attracted much media attention, enabling us to promote the feasibility of service
robots as a promising field for MEMS applications.
The 16th International Micromachine/Nanotech Symposium adopted a theme on
the link between MEMS technology and Green Innovation, while the TIA-NMEMSSymposium provided a venue to discuss the formation of a center in Tsukuba and tointroduce the activities of the MEMS Industry Forum (MIF) toward this realization.
The BEANS Project, facing interim evaluations with the passage of its first two years,
held a seminar to present the achievements and outlook of the project. All seminars
saw high attendance and realized our goal of offering comprehensive MEMS-related
information at one venue, while also providing opportunities for business discussions.
Next year’s exposition will be held on July 13–15, slightly earlier than in previousyears. We hope to see many of you at the exposition, either as exhibitors or visitors.

TIA-NMEMS Symposium
The TIA-NMEMS Symposium was held in
MicroNano Conference Area A on July 30 as
one of the concurrent events. This symposium
was established to present some of theactivities in the works for implementing a
Tsukuba nanotech center.
The Tsukuba Innovation Arena NMEMS(TIA-NMEMS) is an R&D center for the field of
micro-/nano-electromechanical systems, which
is one of the six core domains of the Tsukuba
nanotech center. It is hoped that TIA-NMEMS
will fill an important role in helping to makeJapan’s MEMS industry more competitive
internationally.

ROBOTECH
Many advanced nations are facing adeclining birthrate and aging population,
as well as a declining workforce, criticalissues that may be addressed byextensively incorporating service robots inour daily lives. The aim of the ROBOTECH
exhibition is to assemble MEMS devices
and other key elements for developing
these service robots in order to promote
promising applications for MEMS. (METISenior Vice Minister Tadahiro Matsushita
is shown here at ROBOTECH.)
The ROBOTECH Theme Zone
showcased operations and functions ofactual robots developed by robot-relatedcompanies in Osaka and Kanagawa, as wellas university-related institutes, and drew much attention at the exhibition.

Next Year’s MicroNano 2011 To Be Held
July 13–15 (Wed-Fri), 2011 at Tokyo Big Sight, East Hall
1Although the symposium was scheduled fora timeslot just thirty minutes after the doors ofthe hall were opened, the 210-seat conference
area was fully occupied. All of the speakers
were people occupying positions ofresponsibility, including METI Senior Vice
Minister Tadahiro Matsushita and AIST
President Tamotsu Nomakuchi (picturedabove), which likely raised the profile of thesymposium. In his lecture, Nomakuchi talked
about efforts being conducted to improve
Japan’s system of developing intellectual
property in order to distinguish domestic
research institutes from their counterparts
overseas. Representatives from othercompanies expressed high expectations for theR&D projects carried out at TIA-NMEMS tobolster their own company’s competitiveness.