ILSAN, GOYANG, KOREA ---More than 76,000 people met and interacted with the early prototypes of “Atom”, a highly-intelligent future humanoid from a Japanese animation movie, at Robot World Exhibition 2011, held from Oct. 27th to the 30th at the KINTEX Exhibition Center in Ilsan. Accommodating 750 booths and 167 exhibitors from home and abroad, showing the future of robotics, the yearly event hosted by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy completed its 6th occasion, full of unique robot-events organized by KIRIA (Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement), KAR (Korea Association of Robot Industry), and ICRS (Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems).
For the opening ceremony, many high-profile guests were present; among them were Ms. Kim Young Sun, Minister of Knowledge Economy and Dr. Dennis W. Hong, Professor of Virginia Tech. After, the UK’s Robothespian, a special humanoid host and also an actor, led the way by addressing visitors in Korean. He then let three other humanoids of Kibo (Korea), Charlie (US), and NAO (France) take turns.
The Kibo robot 2.0 was wearing what looked like a special astronaut’s suit has made strides in the department of intelligent recognition, reacting to how people behave, and also is programmed to show human-like facial expressions expressive of various emotions. Kibo, as if celebrating its first debut, danced, hugged, and made human friends.
Imagine a city run solely by robots; it may not be that far from where we are now. When you enter ROBOT CITY where all pseudo-public peripheral functions run impeccably and make your daily routine convenient and comfortable. There is R-MART where robot employees greet you and help you shop around. And you can go to AMAROBOT cinema to sit back and watch a humanoid show. For kids, they can play with and learn from their humanoid
The “ International Robot Contest “ took place as well during the exhibition. The 10 competitions and 24 games invited 7,000 participants from 4,300 teams. The contests were Grand Challenge, Humanoid Robot, Investigation Robot, Intelligent Soc Robot War, FIRA Challenge Cup, IRC. JR, Robot Festival, Family Robot Competition, and Teacher’s Robot Competition.
The RND-2 team from SNUT (Seoul National University of Science & Technology) became a 2-time champion for the Humanoid Robot contest. And for the category of Intelligent Soc Robot War, the AIS team from the same university won. The grand prize of 100,000 USD wasn’t awarded at the Grand Challenge, where a robot participant must start and finish at the same place and reach its destination after navigating through obstacles. Thus, high-level functions like sensing, navigation, and manipulation technology must be effectively utilized. All three teams competed but fell short of completing the mission. An official from the Ministry of Economy and Knowledge promised, “For the development and globalization of the 2012 Robot World, we are going to announce the competitions in April of next year, and also we will promote the event, to invite more overseas teams while developing new
categories for the contest.”
A Star in Humanoid Robotics
Special guest, Dr. Dennis W. Hong, a professor at Virginia Tech visited Robot World 2011. He moved to theU.S.when he was a kid and has become a well-respected specialist in humanoid robotics. Recently, he tookAmericaby surprise when his automatic car gave hope and an opportunity for the blind to drive. This time, he brought his humanoid toy Robots DARWIN wearing a black suit and having blue eyes who, was applauded for having inherited a bull like instinct and only chasing and kicking only a “red” color ball, meanwhile his buddy BIOLOID enjoyed playing catch. No doubt that he is committed and willing to devote his life to a better future for the human race, but he at the same time showed his concern about a considerable number of jobs and self-worth that we could be losing to highly intelligent and never-complaining robots.
