This past Saturday, Tony Christopherson and I took a trip over to the Los Angeles Convention Center to attend the Wired NextFest. It's basically a big festival celebrating future-focused technology. A lot of the exhibits were in the dark, thus difficult to photograph, but I did my best:



This is a terrible photo because you can't even see the vertical red beams of light, but this is a Light Harp. Pass your hand through any one of the laser beams and it will play a note. Very cool.


A wall of smoke that displays a ghostly image of you if you stand in front of it for long enough


Creeeeepy


Call me easily impressed, but this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen...ever. A little, spinning, cone-shaped spiral covered in a magnetic fluid that creates all these little spindlely, spiky things when exposed to rock music (and the pull of other magnets).


It spun around and looked like a tiny Christmas tree from the future!


Using a blue screen to put players into a video game where they are required to beat the crap out of Bruce Lee and George W. Bush.


It had really good, accurate motion detection




Software that detects the aggression in people's voices to know when to turn on hidden security cameras. Elliminates the need to watch hours of video tape? I guess?




A rabid Moon Rover trying to steal some dude's program


A brave soul gets run over by one of the new Mars Rovers, complete with a rocker-bogie suspension system that helps it climb over uneven terrain


Pong of the future. The ball on the screen flies toward you and you have to physically move the monitor to hit it.


This game was really neat because if you had a cellphone handy, you could participate. A bunch of people were standing in front of this screen all shouting "Grab!" into their cellphones over and over again. Funny stuff.


This sign will explain it better than I could. Apparently someone called the wrong number at some point and was screaming "Grab!" repeatedly into some poor stranger's ear.


A climbing wall with a twist: once one of the "climbing nubbins" lights up, you have to touch it to make the next one light up. How many can you touch in 3 minutes?


You physically put pieces of duct tape on a wall and then this projected game will recognize where you put the tape and treat each piece like a "level" for use in gameplay. Crazy.


A snake robot that can swim


One of these dudes is a robot. It's easy to tell which but admit it, it's still kind of frightening.


This precocious Einstein robot did a simple dance to Britney Spears' hit single "Toxic" then let me shake its hand


Tomotaka Takahashi presenting Chroino and FT: These two cuties were the hilight of the day for me


Chroino can stand up by himself from a sitting position, balance on one leg...


...cheer for himself in a rather arrogant fashion...


...and kick a ball off the table. Could he get any more adorable?


FT is his feminine counterpart and can walk and pose like a model


I find her strangely attractive






Here I am with some creepy Hanson-made robot that could supposedly recognize faces with his camera eyes and wave at them. However, there were so many people in close proximity, I think he was getting confused.


This is Keepon: another robot with cameras for eyes, although much cuter. His nose is a microphone and he would turn to look at you if you said Hello or waved your hand in front of his face. Fancy!


Lastly, here I am taking a picture of myself in front of the "YouTube mirror", an interactive video installation that uses 500 realtime YouTube videos to paint a portrait of whoever stands in front of it. Pretty cool in person, not so cool in this photo. Whoops.


Overall a very enjoyable and educational time was had by all. Also we saw JJ Abrams walking around with his kid, which was a special treat!
The most important thing I learned was: the smaller the robot, the cooler it will be. We saw a couple different "life-size" robots and they just aren't nearly as fun or mobile as the smaller ones. Hooray for tiny robots!