BeatBots

Keepon at Three Rivers Arts Festival

beatbots — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:00:02 +0000

Keepon is on display at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, an annual 10-day celebration of the arts in downtown Pittsburgh. During the weekend (June 5th, 6th, & 12th noon-6pm), Keepon is playing outside with kids at Point State Park in the Creativity Zone (sharing a tent with the Saturday Light Brigade). During the week (June 4th, 7th, 8th & 9th 4-8pm; June 10th & 11th noon-8pm), Keepon is in the gallery on the 3rd floor of 805-807 Liberty Avenue for the Art of Technology visual art exhibition, sharing floor space with local artists such as Lori Hepner and Burton Morris.

UPDATE: Photo by Renee Rosensteel.

Keepon wins Smiley Award :-)

beatbots — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:48:15 +0000

Keepon is the winner of this year’s Smiley Award. The award was established three years ago by Scott Fahlman, creator of the emoticon :-)

To celebrate this award, we propose the following character sequence as a Keepon marker:

(o.o)

Many thanks to the judges!

Pictoplasma festival & DVD

beatbots — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:25:24 +0000

Keepon is again being featured in Pictoplasma’s character design and animation festival, this time with the “Don’t You Evah” video. It will screen during the “Characters in Rhythm” session on April 9 at 2pm.

The video is also included in the latest book/DVD compilation, Characters in Motion Vol. 3.

CES 2010

beatbots — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:53:28 +0000

We exhibited Keepon at CES in Las Vegas last week, courtesy of JETRO.

Press included Hack a Day, Butterscotch, Bright Side of News, and two videos by Robotics Trends. We also had good fun out on the town with Evan at BotJunkie!

Keepon in top 10 robots of the decade

beatbots — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:35:28 +0000

Happy new year from BeatBots!

Keepon was selected as one of the top 10 robots of the past 10 years by GoRobotics. At the top of the list:

We tried to pick robots that have made an impact in our culture or have impacted the hobby or science of robots in a major way… Keepon is hard to describe, other than “incredibly cute,” and it’s still stunning how lifelike and emotive two squishy stacked balls with googly-eyes can be… Keepon makes the “Top Robots of the past 10 Years” list simply because of his amazing ability to charm his way into mainstream culture.

Read more…

IREX 2009

beatbots — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:51:16 +0000

We just finished exhibiting Keepon at the International Robot Exhibition at Tokyo Big Sight. With Kokoro’s Actroid Sara as Keepon’s robo-buddy, our booth was rather popular!

We were covered by Robots Dreams (great to finally meet you, Lem!) and Akihabara News.

Keepon Bento

beatbots — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:35:23 +0000

Some people use Keepon as a weight-loss method, but AnnaTheRed has prepared a Keepon-themed bento box for her boyfriend. We love it, and we’re sure her boyfriend enjoyed the well-balanced meal of rice, eggs, meatballs, and broccoli more than the undoubtedly chewy fleece version she made him. We hope she’ll cook for us next time we’re in NY…

RoboDays Festival

beatbots — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:04:26 +0000

We’re exhibiting Keepon at the RoboDays Festival in Odense, Denmark. It’s the third such event, a follow-up to 2007’s Robots at Play festival (where we won the €10,000 grand prize). We were invited back to participate in the panel of judges. This year’s winner is the EyeSeeCam (picture below), a gaze-tracking helmet with a beautifully actuated foveal camera that follows the wearer’s eye movements.

The promo video for the event is brilliant:

IEEE Spectrum: The Invasion of Cute, Therapeutic Robots

beatbots — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:39:41 +0000

IEEE Spectrum’s Josh Romero has made a video about the therapeutic uses of Keepon and Paro. More discussion at Spectrum’s Automaton blog.

Slate V: We, Robots

beatbots — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:11:20 +0000

Danielle Parsons filmed a collection of bots at RoboBusiness in a piece for Slate V’s Conventional Wisdom series. Keepon footage at 0:14, 0:24, 3:08, and 4:10.