RE: Gadgetoff 09

Knocked it out of the park... it was a great day.

Didn't get banned from Staten Island, alas, but came pretty close.

THANK YOU for whoever helped bring lots of Kamen's robotics kids to the event... they were stunned.

Best thing: either the tremendous trebuchet throwing laptops... the Mondo Spider legged vehicle tearing up the turf... the "instant jet powered carnival rides" (more than two... which brought in the FDNY... but they didn't stop the main coolness)... plus more than 400 extremely happy participants... plus giant tesla coils... scads of robots...

Al Seckel drove everyone nuts (as he does) but blew everyone away with his illusions... both in presentation.. and in a huge truck we turned into a very crazy illusion zone.

Ricky Wurman's son brought his huge Doppler radar tornado tracking truck and we had a "stealth car" that had a lot of custom crap that would have made you laugh your head off at the sheer insane waste of it all. Saul Griffith did a great math demo... showing a newer and probably more efficient way to construct wire-frames for animations... radically brilliant... and , in the very very nuts category, Steve Mann was, well, very very very nuts. Played musical bathtub etc...

We had plenty of topflight magicians... all who were incredibly generous... you would have enjoyed them all but Simon Winthrop destroyed people outside doing terrific handwork... and Marco Tempest did an onstage "virtual magic" thing that couldn't be beat.

So here's just the speakers: (All very well done... the demo area had 65 displays... some outrageous... and the outdoor area had about 30 more big things.)

Gadgetoff 2009

Session 1

• Greg Harper - Gadgets

• Sebastian Thrun — DARPA Challenge

• Gary Lauder- Gunshot detection... and "thumb binding"

• Steve Dennis — DHS- Explosion-proof cameras

• Ramesh Raskar — Seeing around corners

• Fred Graver — Fun iPhone applications

• Yossi Vardi — Internet for the Dead

• Jeff Pulver — 140 Words on 140 characters

• Al Seckel - Illusions

• Connor Dickie — Hidden information in photographs

• Brian Walker — Backyard rockets

• Osman Ozcanli — Materials research and design

• Bill Gurstelle — Blowing Stuff Up

• Colin Angle for Marvin Minsky for Ray Kurzweil- Phone Reader for the Blind

Session 2

• Steve Mann's water band

• Steve Mann — Human cyborg and Hydraulophone

• Mark Harder — Planes made from garbage

• Peter Hirschberg — Worlds Fair

• Assaf Biderman — Tracking Garbage

• Musho Zer Ziv — Touring Places You Have No Access To

• Michael Gray - Disaster mapping

• Ted Shwarzicopf — Lock picking machine

• Juan Enriquez — Genetic research

• Peter Whitney — Robotic insects

• Joel Carter — IFI Robotics — Bug toys

• Josh Wurman — Center for Severe Weather Research

• Anthony Fabiano — Backscatter x-ray truck

• Bruce Shapiro — Motion control art

• Q-Car video

Session 3

• Aldebaran Robotics

• Diana Eng — Hi tech dresses

• Christian DiBenedetto - Adidas

• Michelle Kempner — Hi tech gym

any video,

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=187604233288

Here's where Al Seckel's daughter almost got killed...