Wired NextFest

Here's a video from NextFest showing the GlowBots - small social robots that develop relationships amongst each other. They were developed by Mattias Jacobsson of the Viktoria Institute in Sweden and are based on the e-Puck open robotic platform.

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Here's one more video clip showing Zeno greet the hosts of the ABC Good Morning show! Look at the range of expressions on Zeno's face!

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

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I must say it was an awesome day! Not only did waziwazi get to be at the announcement of the $30,000,000 robot competition (ok, plus space launch), but we got to see what we feel will be one of the most anticipated consumer robots ever. Hanson Robotics demo'd their Zeno robot. The breadth of expressions Zeno is capable of is quite awesome.. more so given the adorable Zeno is still 2 years away from production. Hanson Robotics have really done something special here. We'll bring you more coverage of Zeno and some detailed specs in the coming days. See more robot videos here. Stick around!

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This is big news for private ventures in robotics. The X-Prize foundation and Google have just announced a $30 million prize for private ventures to successfully soft-land a robot rover on the moon, roam for at least 500 meters and send back a 'Mooncast' back to earth (more about this later). We are at Wired's NextFest in Los Angeles and will be uploading some video of the announcement soon. The website for the competition has just been launched here.

Also visit later to see more coverage (Update: video above) including video of Hanson Robotics' Zeno, Tomotaka Takahashi's Chroino, SuperBot and more! ... continued

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