Saturday, October 08, 2005

RoboNexus is much better this year.

Took a break from the whole house thing to check out the RoboNexus. Last year I was a little surprised at how small it was. I had never been. Don't get me wrong, it was great, but I expected more. I thought there would be a lot more companies. Last year seemed to be more hobbyist's. I would say fully half was hobby kit type companies, and of course the Battlebot robots were there. So again... it gave a more "garage" type feel.

This year however, I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only had the venue had changed, but the feeling was more CES or trade-show-ey. The space wasn't really all that bigger, but there were less hobby booths, and more application type booths. I completely filled all three of my camera cards. So... lets start with iRobot. The event sponsor, and the first booth you see when you walk in. Because, lets face it, iRobot has become our friend. If you have a roomba, chances are you have named it like a pet. This is one item helping our people in Iraq:




Then, there is the much awaited Scooba. The item that will make some of us lazier, and others able to deal with their crazy hectic lives. If you have pets and construction, you just can't live without iRobot. Even though this was a prototype, it really did a decent job. The second shot is of the Scooba taking care of some spilled Pepsi.




You just can't live without one of these shirts.



I'm willing to do product placement for iRobot. We early adopted Roomba. I believe we had one problem in more than a year, and iRobot sent a free replacement part lickity split.

The second coolest item this year? The future, man. The future is here. 3D laser printers. My husband and I have been watching this technology for a couple of years now, and I was super excited they had a booth.





These are the items they had on display. Including a replica of the machine itself, and colors here and here!

There were a lot of miniature toy robots. Robosapian, and Croino. We were bummed we didn't get to see the demo, but we arrived right after the first demo, and weren't going to stay for the next. Next time, they should at least have a demo every hour.

These people had a big crowd everytime they did a demo. Here, here, and here. I had stepped out of the crowd after getting a few shots, and wished I had stayed, because I couldn't get close again after realizing the demo was much longer than I first had thought.

The Sony Aibo dog was there. I was more impressed than I thought I would be. It was very good at mimicing a real pet.

An oddity was this theraputic robot seal. Here, and here.

Lastly, a robot show would not be complete without movie robots.

1 comment:

  1. Nice pictures.
    You can read a little more about what went on at the conference at Robot Gossip.

    thanks.

    ReplyDelete