Asian Robots
Oh my God trust me the Asian robots are gonna take over the world one day. They can make human faces at you, walk, dance, look like Einstein, and talk at the same time. Is that creepy or what? Furthermore, they have robots that mimic your hand gestures, dance to a Japanese tune, and bang your girlfriend when you’re not looking. Ok I made that last one up but everything else is true. Honest.
I am referring to the Wired NextFest expo that I went to today. The point of the show was to showcase the future of technology with an emphasis on how robots will take over planet earth in the near future. Nah, just messin’ with ya. It wasn’t that bad. Those robots were pretty cool and I still think we are far from robots killing humans and ruling the earth. In fact, that might never happen. With scientists not developing any alternative energy sources, how the hell will we power these robots? Solar power still isn’t available in a convenient form-factor for power-hungry applications and fuel cells are having a rough time getting to work properly. We will self-destruct long before robots can take over. I wager 2050 as the last year for human survival. What surprised me was that all those cool robots were from Japan/Korea/China. How about the Americans? They had robots that can throw basketballs. Yay. But hey, these were only school kids while the others were made by professionals actively working in robotics. Hell, MIT had a device that can make music using a series of tubes (internets?) spinning at varying speeds. There was also a laser harp. Yeah. It took me a while to figure out what all those red lasers were doing being sent down to a 45 degree mirror-like device. They were cheap lasers, one could tell. But the magic was in how they produced music if you moved your palm in such a way that you cut off partciular lasers. Snazzy.
They had XPS 700s setup in LAN!!! Running Half-Life 2 Deathmatch!!!! Kids were glued to them systems. Pricks. The cabinets were ginormous but gorgeous in that formula red and aluminum finish. There were sections on alternate sources of energy and the Discovery Channel. Atari was giving away free CDs with 12 classic games. I picked up two. The XPSes for some reason were not in the gaming section but the gaming section had its own interesting stuff. Like the “putting you IN the game” area where cameras put you inside a game and tracked your movements into in-game movement. It was a 2-D fighter, a la Street Fighter and old-school Mortal Kombat and it seemed unfinished but this was an excellent new technology. Competition for the Wii I’m sure!
Rabbit Theater - creepy to say the least. Imagine 150 electronic rabbits flopping their ears and glowing in different colors to the sound of music. In case you’re wondering what kind of rabbits these were, go here:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/8301/
I think I forgot to mention those cute baby seals that I clubbed at the show. All right that wasn’t funny. In the robotics section, there were these robotic seals that respond to touch and love and affection and all that jazz. You can keep them as pets and they won’t die! They’re furry, cute, cuddly, and without all the mess that comes with owning a REAL baby seal. Again, these were from the Japs who seem to wanna make up for killing all those whales by making robot baby seals. Some stupid kid kept trying to poke his finger into the eyes of one seal. The seal would promptly close its eyes whenever he tried to do that. That seal is smarter than you asshole, get over it.
Among other stuff, there were eco-friendly cars, the SpaceShipOne, a circular panoramic display with a mile-long line to boot, and stuff for kids to do. There was a real 3-D display where you can actually perceive depth and when you see the same image on a regular LCD display, it looks so…2-D. I got to see the new Vein Imager that continuously takes images when you place a hand/body part under it and projects it back on the hand to clearly show where the veins are. The imaging and projection takes so little time that the images are pretty much real-time. It can even tell when you have a bruise becase it shows the swollen nerve where you took that punch at the bar last night for messing with some guy’s girlfriend. They will use the imager for babies and old people. GE had this display on materials that was interesting. They showed how a butterfly’s wings were hydrophobic due to surface geometry and texture and how they were building materials which did the same. It was quite nice and something to keep in mind after (if?) I get my materials science degree from Columbia.
It was a fun show but I regret having missed the panel discussion on the future of robots. All thanks to that interminable line to get tickets. I knew I should have bought them before I got there. I had to run to the train station in the afternoon to catch the 12:31pm train and got there just in time. Then, I had to pretty much run to catch the 5:48pm train back and made it comfortably. Eventful day. Out.
