My CES 2007 Report

AVS PARTY / AVN SHOW / MISCELLANEOUS

Ever year AV-Science and the forum host a party. This year it was on the second night (Tuesday) at the Sahara. The AVS Forum now has 340,000 members and over 6 MILLION independent hits per day. Congratulations David and Alan! Were it not for the AVS Forum, I probably wouldn’t be doing CRTs fulltime..

For those select few that might not know about the avs forum, here’s the link. Everything you needed to know about all things electronic:  http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/

and their coverage of the CES show 2007:  http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=137

Some pix of the party: The Prince impersonator..

A side view of Sam Runco:

A couple of pic of David Bott (owner of AVS):

The saddest part of the show for me: The closing of the Stardust. Ever since I went to Vegas the first time when I was 12, the Stardust sign was my all time favourite on the strip. It’s now been dark for a month or so. RIP Stardust. It’s scheduled to be demolished in February apparently.

AVN SHOW SUMMARY

As some of you are aware, the Adult Video awards/trade show is held almost at the same time as the CES show. The shows used to run simultaneously, but this year they only overlapped by one day.

While I didn’t attend the AVN (people not in the adult industry can get into the trade show for $75 apparently), I did manage to grab a show directory which is, ummmmm, interesting, and take the below pix in the registration area. You can imagine what you’d find at the show…

OK, I’ve saved the very best for the very last. When I say Robot, you think either of automated machinery that assembles something like cars, or you think of an actor in a cheap cardboard or metal costume out of an old sci-fi movie, right?

Well, here’s Honda’s entry into the robot world. Asimo. Check out the video clips (see below). What little I know about robots in humanoid form is that engineers have struggled for years to get a robot to walk upright without losing it’s balance. I’ve seen the odd documentary on the Discovery channel that shows robots taking a few steps on a tether, but then falling over. The Asimo is truly amazing in that it can walk, forwards and back, run, kick a ball, and walk up and down stairs. Apparently walking down a flight of stairs is even harder for balancing than walking up. There are 34 sensors that continually compute the center of gravity and other parameters of Asimo’s surroundings. The example given for Asimo’s use is to aid the invalid. Videos were shown of Asimo giving a woman a newspaper. Check out the hand/arm motion of Asimo. The movements are very fluid, and both of the robot’s legs come off the floor for 0.8 seconds while running, just like a human does.

Videos:

More information is found here: http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/

This was by far the most impressive thing about the 2007 CES show.