Hideki Kozima

Here's a video showing Keepon identifying a friendly face in the crowd: its creator Hideki Kozima.

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Last night, I ventured out to Wired NextFest's kickoff concert in Hollywood featuring Spoon and Keepon, the cute little robot we wrote about earlier. What a great event it was! I met with Hideki Kozima and Marek Michalowski and several of the Keepon bots. Hideki Kozima, co-star of the famous "Don't You Evah" video, is a great guy I must say. He and Marek let concert-goers get close to Keepon and play with the little bot as if it were alive. Oh and umm.. I forgot my camera.. doh! Some of Kozima's research involves using interactive robots like Keepon as a therapeutic tools for children with autism.

Keepon's becoming quite a star. According to GetRobo, it won this year's Robots at Play Prize in Denmark and has been gaining popularity in the mainstream media. Oh, and Jimmy Wales, founder of wikipedia showed up on stage

Keepon is an incredibly cute little robot that umm.. doesn't do very much. About 1' tall, the cutezy witzy little bot bobs up and down, turns around and nods rhythmically in sync to groovy music! The robot, built by Hideki Kozima, is designed to "interact with children by communicating attention and emotion". It features two 'eye' cameras and a microphone in its nose and unfortunately, isn't for sale!

Keepon was made famous by this music video that's received over 1.3 million views. In the latest video above, Keepon is seen getting its groove on to Spoon's "Don't You Evah". Keepon will appear alongside Spoon for a Los Angeles concert kicking off Wired's Nextfest in September! Rock on little robot, rock on!