Gadget design, robotics, hacks, DIY technology and more.

Montreal is soon going to become the city of geeks! On March 5 and 6, the Geekfest 2011 is going to take place and Carlitos’ contraptions is going to be present. I hope to see all of you fellow geeks at our table.

What is the Montreal Geekfest?

The Montreal Geek Festival (or Geekfest) is an enjoyable festival that brings all sorts of geeks together. Non-geeks are also welcome.

The festival’s mission is to:

1. Target all the different types of geeks and bring them all together.
2. Teach the public about geek culture while deconstructing the stereotypes.
3. Promote more specific Montreal geek festivals (Otakuthon, Worldcon, etc.);
4. Promote Montreal geek conferences (Podcamp Montreal, Webcom Montréal, etc.);
5. Promote Montreal geek organizations (W3Québec, Île Sans Fil, etc.).

The main goal is for all participants to have a good time and make new discoveries while enjoying the pleasant atmosphere.
- geekfestmtl.com

What is Carlitos’ Contraptions doing at the Geekfest?

I am a geek, it is no secret, and I love geeky stuff so the Geekfest is a very good place to be for me. Beyond that, I would like to share with the Montreal community my latest developments with the Nao, some of my previous contraptions and promote my upcoming gadgets design service. See the message below form Nao 1337.

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See you all at the Geekfest!

I put together this quick tango dance. For those who know Tango, you should be able to see that the dance steps are fairly accurate, albeit a bit limited due to the robot lack of flexibility and my lack of programming talent.

I’ll be publishing my behaviours (the code running in the Nao) for everybody to download once I figure a nice and elegant way to do it.

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In the video above, Nao 1337 dances one of my favourites tangos: Por Una Cabeza by Carlos Gardel.

It was to be expected that since I come from Argentina, my Nao would end up dancing tango and probably drinking mate in the near future.

As announced previously, I joined Aldebaran developers program. As a result, I have been living with Nao for a few weeks now.

Nao 1337 Waves

I named him Nao 1337 but I am open to suggestions. You can leave a comment below if you think of a better name. You can see a quick presentation of this awesome humanoid robot below.

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I’ll be posting further developments, images and pictures as I progress. I am planning on making several applications in order to achieve my ultimate goal of having Nao play chess.

Nao 1337 Stands Up

The Bandana

As you can see in the pictures and videos, Nao1337 wears a red bandana. This is manly because he is bad-ass and utterly cool.

Nao 1337 Sitting