BeatBots » Appearances

Keepon at Three Rivers Arts Festival

beatbots — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:00:02 +0000

Keepon is on display at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, an annual 10-day celebration of the arts in downtown Pittsburgh. During the weekend (June 5th, 6th, & 12th noon-6pm), Keepon is playing outside with kids at Point State Park in the Creativity Zone (sharing a tent with the Saturday Light Brigade). During the week (June 4th, 7th, 8th & 9th 4-8pm; June 10th & 11th noon-8pm), Keepon is in the gallery on the 3rd floor of 805-807 Liberty Avenue for the Art of Technology visual art exhibition, sharing floor space with local artists such as Lori Hepner and Burton Morris.

UPDATE: Photo by Renee Rosensteel.

Pictoplasma festival & DVD

beatbots — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:25:24 +0000

Keepon is again being featured in Pictoplasma’s character design and animation festival, this time with the “Don’t You Evah” video. It will screen during the “Characters in Rhythm” session on April 9 at 2pm.

The video is also included in the latest book/DVD compilation, Characters in Motion Vol. 3.

CES 2010

beatbots — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:53:28 +0000

We exhibited Keepon at CES in Las Vegas last week, courtesy of JETRO.

Press included Hack a Day, Butterscotch, Bright Side of News, and two videos by Robotics Trends. We also had good fun out on the town with Evan at BotJunkie!

IREX 2009

beatbots — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:51:16 +0000

We just finished exhibiting Keepon at the International Robot Exhibition at Tokyo Big Sight. With Kokoro’s Actroid Sara as Keepon’s robo-buddy, our booth was rather popular!

We were covered by Robots Dreams (great to finally meet you, Lem!) and Akihabara News.

RoboDays Festival

beatbots — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:04:26 +0000

We’re exhibiting Keepon at the RoboDays Festival in Odense, Denmark. It’s the third such event, a follow-up to 2007’s Robots at Play festival (where we won the €10,000 grand prize). We were invited back to participate in the panel of judges. This year’s winner is the EyeSeeCam (picture below), a gaze-tracking helmet with a beautifully actuated foveal camera that follows the wearer’s eye movements.

The promo video for the event is brilliant:

Congressional Robotics Caucus briefing

beatbots — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:24:24 +0000

We were invited by TTC to demonstrate Keepon at the May 21, 2009 briefing of the Congressional Robotics Caucus at the Capitol in Washington, DC. The Caucus, chaired by Reps. Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Phil Gingrey (R-GA), focuses on challenges faced by the nation’s emerging robotics industry. In addition to several demos, the presentations included an unveiling of A Roadmap for US Robotics.

ICRA 2009

beatbots — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:05:19 +0000

We brought Keepon to the 2nd HRI Robot Challenge (at the ICRA 2009 conference) in Kobe, Japan, May 14-15. He got to play with the extinct robodog AIBO, a worthy adversary…

UPDATE: Keepon has won the competition for the second year in a row! We received a lovely certificate from the Mayor of Kobe.

RoboBusiness 2009

beatbots — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:22:07 +0000

BeatBots exhibited Keepon at the RoboBusiness 2009 Conference & Expo, April 15-16 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. We were in The Technology Collaborative’s booth. On Thursday, Marek gave a talk in the RoboMedicus (healthcare robotics) track on “Socially Interactive Robots in Therapeutic Play.”

UPDATE: Trender Research posted a story about our exhibit. IEEE Spectrum also has a nice writeup.

Pictoplasma/Pictopia Festival

beatbots — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:44:02 +0000

Keepon will be a part of Pictoplasma’s Pictopia Festival in Berlin from March 19-21, 2009. It’s a great honor for us to be in the company of such innovative artists, designers, and animators. And we’ve long been fans of Pictoplasma’s curation and compilation of minimal character designs from diverse communities — now including robotics!

From their web site:

In spring 2009, Pictoplasma and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt will host the PICTOPIA festival, the world’s first ever large-scale presentation and celebration of reduced and abstract character design and art.

In March and April, Berlin will be transformed into a character biotope and a meeting point for an international scene of designers, artists, producers and an interested public. At the heart of the festival is an exhibition which explores the huge diversity of the character universe, where artists remix and sample, condense the surreal and uncanny, inflate all proportions and stage bizarre rituals to introduce their characters into contemporary culture.

The festival programme also features the long-awaited 3rd Pictoplasma Conference which, since its inception in 2004, has set the standard for a playful yet concentrated approach to the subject. For the first time, scientific light will be shed on the character phenomenon in a symposium, which brings together experts from the fields of art history, cultural studies, robotics and media theory.

The Pictoplasma Animation Festival will put the characters in motion, steering well clear of the mainstream. And the Character Walk will lead visitors through 20 galleries and project rooms throughout Berlin-Mitte and deeper into the visual worlds of individual artists.

BeatBots at CES

beatbots — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:36:09 +0000

We’re exhibiting Keepon at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today through Sunday! We’re in the Sands Expo Center, booth #73837D.

UPDATE: Our exhibit was covered by BotJunkie and Discover Magazine. More on the way.