The Human Robot Friendship Ball 2018
Last week The Brainary joined in on Sydney’s Vivid Ideas festivities at the innovative Human Robot Friendship Ball. At The Connection Rhodes Learning Space, man and machine mingled together allowing participants to interact with a variety of robots as well as meet the people who build, operate and care for them. Various businesses, high schools, local community groups and tertiary institutions presented their robots to an enthusiastic audience. Age was no limit for the 100 plus participants as young and old immersed themselves into the diverse range of hands-on activities, including a human friendship booth and an epic human robot dance off. The dancing highlights included our NAO humanoid robot and Ruby from The Connection, Rhodes boogying to a DJ blasting a mix of new and old tunes.
As well as NAO we showcased Zora, the pre-programmed caregiver software for NAO robot and introduced MiRo, our cute-as-a-button social robot dog, to a captive audience. As the standout crowd favourite, MiRo spent most of the evening playing on the floor with the children, and receiving lots of pats and hugs, while NAO’s Zora software entertained children waiting for a pat with demonstrations on how to be programmed to do the dab and to deliver an array of classic robot jokes such as:
“Why was the robot angry?”
“Because someone kept pushing his buttons.”
The Human Robot Friendship Ball was a huge success and we would like to thank The Connection, Rhodes and City of Canada Bay Libraries for organising the Ball and inviting The Brainary to contribute to such a wonderful event.
