The “Festival des Robots” is taking place right now in Mantes-la-Jolie, France. It will end next sunday and its a first in the country. The event aims to help people understand robotics and mechatronics, thanks to a wide range of animations, round tables and student competitions.

I was there yesterday and it was quite fun. The event targets a very large audience, especially children, and it succeeds in presenting robotics in an entertaining way. Applications are quite diverse and probably help people understand many aspects of robots.

On the negative side, I am afraid this Festival shows how late France is in this field. If i compare what I saw yesterday to the big robots events I attended four years ago in Japan, the gap is simply… dramatic. I regret the lack of humanoid robots or existing domestic machines from around the world. At least, a few movies, explaining what’s going on in other countries, would have been useful.

Still, this Festival is a very good initiative. I hope it will have success and will become an important, yearly event.

Below are a few pictures I took on Day 1 of the Festival:

The always popular robotic puppets…

Children compete with a robotic arm to build a house (yeah, yeah, they lost)

A 1/2 scale reproduction of the Opportunity exploration rover, nicely done by Magnitude 78

Make a drawing on a sheet of paper, and the robotic arm will reproduce it on a cup

I had a chat with Pob-Technology, a French start-up based in Lyons, which sells cheap but interesting robots for educational purpose…

Pob-Technology’s “Hexa-Pob”

The major event of the Festival is the “Mobile Robots World Challenge”, a competition where robots have to follow a track and detect lights above it

The competition has attracted teams from around the world

Here a team from Russia at work

Another student competition: robots have to find and selectively collect garbage (plastic bottles, cans and batteries)