When I walked onto the Stanford University campus this week and into the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab, I was greeted by a short, gray robot waving his two long arms -- he was looking for a high-five.
All around me robots of all sizes were roaming the floor. I was trapped -- in the future.
Billed as the Silicon Valley Robot Block Party and held during National Robotics Week, the party yesterday was a celebration of human-robot interactions. Developers, researchers, and makers shared tips and explored the very ideas of what a robot can be and do. The people I met here are interested in robots on many levels. There were startups pitching their businesses, home-brew builders looking to have some fun, high-school kids building competition robots, and Ph.D. students just exploring.
That high-fiving robot? It's the creation of Willow Garage, a founding member of the Silicon Valley Robotics group that hosted the block party. In 2010, Willow Garage announced it would be delivering 11 of its $400,000 PR-2 robots free to research groups. The program, however, which began as an open-source platform intended to encouraged roboticists to collaborate on creating a universal robot language, has quickly evolved. After just a few years, following an announcement in February, Willow Garage says it is shifting toward becoming a profitable and self-sustaining company. What's next in the lives of robots? That's the question everyone here wants to answer.
Even after the PR-2's 2010 release, within a year the stereoscopic cameras that provided the PR-2's vision were replaced with commercially available hardware -- Microsoft's Kinect, highlighting the rigorous pace of innovation. The commercial, off-the-shelf technology available to each of us today, as NASA has discovered, is fast, smart, and constantly upgraded.
And as the evolution of robotics quickens, maybe that's what events like National Robotics Week and the Robot Block Party, are all about. There's a sense that though robots are already a great part of our lives, we are still in the early stages of robotics innovation. Things are evolving quickly. For that reason, a marketplace of ideas such as this is incredibly important.
People and ideas are being connected. Across genres, robotics hobbyists are talking to startups, educators are talking with industry, and students are talking to engineers -- all with a focus on the future -- envisioning a future where automation is smarter, machines are more useful, and everyone has the technical skills to live side by side with our robot friends.
这个星期，我来到了美国斯坦福大学校园，当我走进大众汽车创新实验室时，一个灰色的身材矮小的机器人挥舞着两条长长的手臂欢迎我的到来，并想与我击掌。
各种大小的机器人在我的周围走来走去，我似乎置身未来。
“硅谷机器人街区聚会”在“国家机器人周”期间 举行，昨天的聚会是为了庆祝人机交互。开发人员，研究人员和制造者探索了机器人未来的模样和功能，并分享了一些相关的技巧。参加这个聚会的人都或多或少对 此感兴趣。一些创业公司在寻找商机，而普通民众只是想在这里找些乐子，高中生正在举办机器人比赛，博士生在进行科学研究。
机器人也会击掌庆祝？这是Willow Garage公司的创作成果，这家公司是硅谷机器人组织的创始成员之一，同时也主办了这次的聚会。2010年，Willow Garage公司宣布将把11个价值40万美元的“第2代智能机器人”免费赠予研究小组。该项目最初是作为一个开源平台，旨在鼓励机器人专家合作创建一种 通用的机器人语言，目前已经得到了迅速发展。短短几年后，Willow Garage公司在二月份发出一项声明后宣称，它正转而成为一家具有盈利性和自立性的公司。今后机器人又会出现什么样的革新呢？这里的每一个人都想知道答 案。
“第2代智能机器人”在2010年发布后，一年之内，为机器人提供视觉的愿景立体相机便迅速被市售硬件——微软的Kinect所取代，这突出了技术创新的步伐如此迅猛。如今，我们每个人都可以享受到商业化的现成技术，而且这些技术发展迅速，充满智能化，且不断升级换代。
机器人革新越来越快，也许这就是人们举办国家机器人周和机器人街区聚会的原因。从某种意义上说，虽然机器人已经是我们生活重要组成部分，但我们仍然处于机器人创新的早期阶段。万物都在迅速变化发展，充满创意的市场非常重要。
在这里，人们互相交流最新创意。不同行业的人们相互交流，例如，机器人爱好者与创业者，教育家与企业家，学生与工程师，都在聚焦未来。他们期待自动化变得更加智能，机器变得更加实用，每个人都能与机器人朋友并肩生活。