This Saturday, the Robot Film Festival is taking place in Portland, Ore. This is the 8th year of the festival, and after bouncing around between San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles, the festival has (at least temporarily) settled on the greatest city on Earth (and coincidentally my hometown), Portland.
The theme this year is “Vintage Arcade Revival,” celebrating the culture and technology of the 1980s. Or at least, celebrating what passed for culture and technology back then. I’ll be giving a short introductory talk to help kick off the film festival, about the progress we’ve seen in social home robots from the 1980s to today. Since I know some of you live in Antarctica and probably can’t make it to Portland (for everyone else there’s no excuse), here’s a selection of videos from the talk I’ll be giving to give you a sense of just how much has changed in social home robots over the last 35 years.