Monday, June 3, 2013

2013 World Science Festival Turns Downtown Brooklyn into Robot Land

If you like cutting-edge technology, NYU-Poly at MetroTech was where you wanted to be on Saturday as the World Science Festival touched down in Brooklyn for a full day of functioning robots and gadgets like smart-watches, 3D printers, video games and other interactive tech.

After dark, the festival continued at Brooklyn Bridge Park where astronomers set up telescopes for stargazing and gave talks about the nighttime sky.

Above: Hubo the Humanoid Robot, a collaboration of Drexel University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

Hubo walks, shakes hands, etc. One day it may be smart enough to be a personal assistant or help save lives.

One popular exhibit was the MakerBot tent, where the Replicator2 3D printer was churning out cool little plastic objects.  

Joshua Harker, a 3D-printing artist, was also showing his sculptures. Skylar Tibbits exhibited 4D printing, where objects self-assemble over time.

Fixers’ Collective NYC taught people how to fix their broken gadgets.

Several inventors and scientists gave talks about their work. Above, IBM's VP of Research Michael Karasick explains "A Boy and His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie," a film created out of individual atoms. He spoke about how atoms can store memories and how that ability may someday be used in quantum computing.

In Brooklyn Bridge Park, people got to gaze into powerful telescopes. It turns out that Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury were aligned Saturday night—- something referred to as the “Dance of the Planets."

The Brooklyn branch of the World Science Festival is a great day of science and technology. Can't wait for next year.

Photos by MK Metz

- World Science Festival in Brooklyn 2012

Go to McBrooklyn's HOME PAGE.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You need to cross the bridge with your kids for the World Science Festival Street Fair by Washington Square Park. It's awesome, and they too had robots galore, plus lots of fun interactive things to do, plus performances, and making pastries with the White House Pastry Chef Bill Yosses (eating healthy foods helps your brain, and there was a NYU prof who brought a real human brain).

Anonymous said...

There's nothing like real human brains to aid digestion, too.