TDK used to be known as a global recording media company such as cassette tape and VHS. In these years, they drastically changed its business model to BtoB, as an electronic parts supplier and they achieved it so successfully. In the others hand, they started to be suffer from hiring young talents because the awareness of company drastically dropped along with changing its business to BtoB. So, they needed to initiate a brand-new communication to rebuild their corporate brand.

Electronic parts manufacturer TDK needed to appeal its brand in the technology market where new brands appear one after another. So, we start prototyping project to create something new to appeal TDK technology from a different perspective: “Bons-AI” was developed, aimed at enabling humans to communicate with plants.

Bons-AI is a like no other bonsai which can communicate with human. Each function was designed to encourage people and plants could have compassion for each other: asking people to give water when needed, or having conversation if people talk their problems to BonsAI.

Although it’s not designed to be perfect, this unique project using technology in a totally different way, generated genuine interest.?

We initiated Bons-AI project as an ongoing project. We opened project outline to public before it started, and collaborated with several partners which gave us AI and robotics. The progress of this projects was introduced online and after 5 months, the prototype Bons-AI was created. We designed three functions: asking for water to humans if needed, walking around the room to look for sunlight and answering to humans's problem when people talk to it. A few series of concept movie and exhibitions attracted interests from mass and social media from not only Japan but also overseas.