I went up to Los Angeles in September to attend the Wired NextFest 2007 at the LA Convention Center.  Here are some videos of what I saw.

 

This is a walking robot that can carry a passenger.  It looked pretty difficult to drive.  It wasn't as simple as using a joystick.  The rider would press a bunch of buttons, walk a few steps then stop, press a bunch of buttons again and walk a few steps and stop...

 

 

This is a robot with a realistic looking face.  There is some pretty cool AI going on because it would recognize people and respond to them.  The group had some of the faces on the table and they were pretty freaky looking.

 

 

This is Albert Hubo.  I think he was the first walking robot with a head that looked like a real human.

 

 

This is just a cool door that looked like something out of a sci fi movie or something.

 

 

This is really cool.  The lady in the middle is wearing a cap that reads her brain waves.  She is controlling what is on the left screen by her thoughts (I think it is Google Earth).  The screen on the right shows what the computer is picking up from her brain and what action that translates to.

 

 

This is the classic video game where the player is actually in the game.  The kid playing has a screen in front and behind him.  When he moves forward his character moves to the right on the screen.  When he moves backwards the character moves to the left.  He plays the game by punching and kicking the virtual bad guys.  It's kinda like Dance Dance Revolution but with fighting instead.

 

This is like a game of super pong.  There is a virtual ball bouncing between the player's screens and they have to move the screens to keep the ball in view.  The screen acts as the player's window into the game and as the paddle.

 

 

This was a rock climbing wall crossed with a video game.  The grips on the wall can light up.  Different games can be played on it or I imaging it could be used to assist people new to rock climbing.  The girl in the video is playing a game where she tries to toush as many of the lit up grips as she can in one minute. 

 

 

This was set up at the Google/X Prize booth.  I just thought it was cool.

 

 

This is like the Wheel Bike General Grevious rode in Star Wars.  They didn't actually demonstrate it while I was there but I have seen a video of it.  It looks pretty fun, yet awkward.

 

 

Personal helicopter.  Cool.

 

 

One of thse guys is a robot and the other is the CEO of the company that made it.  The robot was super realistic looking, until it moved.

 

 

 

Strange solar car of the future.  This was the larger model that can sit 3 people.  It kind of looks like ET from the front.

 

 

NASA was there and one of the things they showed was this model of the Space Shuttle replacement.  The rocket on the left carries the crew and the rocket on the right carries the cargo.  You can tell that it is partially made from current space program parts.

 

 

This is a windmill for your house.  It doesn't take up that much space.  I don't know how much power it can generate but any way we can harness wind or solar power is fine by me.

 

There was a display by a solar cell company that was very cool.  You know how solar cells have the small indivdual cells on them?  Well it looks lite this company made each one of those cells a sphere and connected them by wires.  The spheres were then encased in a flexable plastic substance.  The final product looked like a plastic mat with a grid of dots on it.  The spheres were separated by a few millimeters.  There were three features that were unique to this kind of solar cell.  First, because the individual cells were spherical the electricity output was not dependent on the angle the light hitting the panel.  Second, the panels could be made flexable.  And third, because the spheres were separated by a few mm and the plastic encasing them was clear, the panel was see through.  They actually had one of these panels in a window.  I could totally see this installed in businesses and homes in the future.

 

I also saw a touch screen computer that was similar to the Microsoft Surface computer.  This was from Northrop Grumman.  They were showing a map with hurricane Rita.  The map showed the satellite image of the storm and all of the planes in the air at the time.  The planes were also moving in 'real time'.  They could zoom in and out with multitouch.  They could draw on the screen and change what data was being shown.  It seemed like there was a lot of data stored for this system with all fo the airplane data, satellite maps, wind speed data and when I asked they guy how much data they needed all he confirmed it was 'a lot'.

 

Overall the Wired NextFest was pretty cool.  I thought it was going to be bigger then it was.  I saw the whole thing in about 3 hours.  Some of the things I had seen before (like the OQO Model 2) but most of it was stuff that was new to me.