Session 2 – Robotics

Robots! Robots! Robots!  We couldn’t have a conference about tech without mentioning robots now could we?  We kicked off this session with Bruce Duncan and his robot Bina48, who although suffered from some stage fright at first warmed up to the crowd a bit calling us all beautiful people, what a charmer!  We learned from Bruce the concept of a mindfile and he reminded the audience that we are all social beings who want to share their stories.  Bina48, certainly shared her thoughts with us and we were lucky enough to even have some audience interaction.

Our next robot was Nico, created by Justin Hart, who discussed mirror tests and how he is working towards having robots learn about themselves and learn through operation.  Although no robots have yet to pass a mirror test, we are getting closer and closer to a robot actually passing a test.  Who knows where we will go from there.

Unfortunately our third speaker of the afternoon Hiroshi Ishiguro could not make it due to illness, but we all wish him well, and were excited to learn more about ideacity from the head geek himself  Moses.

Our final geek of this session was Kathleen Kajioka, who serenaded us with her beautiful violin, and taught us about the three sides of Bach: the rockstar; who sired 22 children and adored beer, the angel, and the hacker.  With the help of her violin, Kathleen demonstrated how Bach ‘hacked’ music and got away with it.

That wrapped up our 2^nd session of the day, and people have begun to break for lunch.  People are excited about what the next session will hold about transportation and maybe as famously quoted in Back to the Future “Marty, where we’re going we’re not going to need roads,” might be a reality.