Meeting with Altion

I met Altion over a glass of red wine in downtown Tokyo and our common background in research and development sparked mutual interest and friendship. Altion is working with a team of highly qualified specialists in robotic technology. The next thing your kids will be playing with might very well come from their labs!...

Enter the mind of a scientist, here is all we can find out about Altion!...

H3 , Altion, and his twin brother (H3's!). In the background, in black and white,
a residual memory vision of the robots.

Your name: Altion Simo
Your job and employer: Research Scientist, AIST , National Institute of Advanced Science and Technologies.
Your languages: Some Balkan, European, Asian language. In a word : “A seriously messed up individual, language-wise, and Culture-wise”.
Your food: Seafood; Asian (raw and spicy) and Mediterranean (lot of olive oil involved)
Your countries: Albania, Canada, Japan
Your stay in Japan: my 9th year in a row, nice so far...
Your first success: Getting in touch with this world
Your most recent achievement: I finished building the twin brother of H3 a humanoid based robot I use when experimenting with children in a ubiquitous environment.
Your wake-up time: most probably 9.30AM
Your working hours: 10.30~11.00AM until 20.00~22.00
Your job's most rewarding moments: when everything comes together and the systems run without glitches
Your job's toughest moments: when I am IDLE or when things go the way you didn’t plan.
Your nightmare: every year when I meet my mother and she screams into my face : Haven’t you gotten married ?!... not yet?! (grin)
Your sports: running, and watersports (diving, swimming, jetski, etc... no doubt I am Pisces)
Your hobby: Motorbikes and the “Science” of Photography, Movies, Chillout/Ambient Music, laying in the Mediterranean sun, by the sea.
Your dreamland: only in the movies!(like the trilogy THE MATRIX)
Your treasure: The hardware hosting my assets (i.e. my head)
Your assets: my knowledge and experiences
Your areas for improvement: many (nobody's perfect)
You don't like others when they: When they don’t accept me without prejudice.
Your best time last year: visiting Hawaii (we were so relaxed and having a good time, that we missed the plane back to Tokyo)
Your quality time outside the office: roaming in downtown and meet cool people
Things that keep you awake at night: tomorrow’s output of life
Things that get you out of bed in the morning: trying every time something new on my research not to mention sentimental things.
Your favorite reading: Neal Stephenson, SNOW CRASH
In the plane: electronic books in my phone, mainly related to my speciality.
Right now: a book in Albanian “Liqeni”, a Japanese novel written by Yasunari Kawabata, and translated from French by my cousin Nasi Lera.
Your role model in your industry: People at the cutting edge in R&D who are enjoying it.
Your role model outside your industry: People who are shaping the world.
What will come next in your industry: Distributed Intelligence and Robots substituting computers... and a LOT of mishandling and ERRORS
You in 2016: Definitely out of research labs and in the business world.