One of the most common complaints I remember from expats in Taiwan was about the lack of cultural events. My last visit to Taipei showed that there’s actually quite a lot going on in Taipei.
On my very short visit I saw two pavilions from the Taipei Expo (Pavilion of Future and Angel Life), visited two new artist villages (Treasure Hill ; Taipei Artist Village at Beiping East rd), explored two new renovated cultural districts (Huashan Creative Park ; Songshan cultural district), discovered one new museum (Hakka Cultural Center) and had a great time in no less than four off-the-beaten-track specialty museums (Puppetry ; World Religions ; MOCA ; Drinking Water).
But that was only part of the experience, as I was also able to catch no less than four ongoing exhibitions – a 4D holography exhibition, a Lego exhibition, a Dali exhibition (Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall) and, cover here, a "Robot story" exhibition (Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall).
This little exhibition …
explores the history of robotics and their future development. Over 80 exhibits, ranging from a draft robot in 1920 to the armors of Iron Man Mark I, II and III in 2012, are on display to give visitors a clear picture of the development of the global robotics industry.
Besides Robo Thespian, visitors can also find at the exhibition quite a few famous robots appearing in movies, including Robot Cyborg in the films “RoboCop” and “The Terminator, and Sony Robot Dog Aibo.
Being the geek that I am, I couldn’t resist going in. The clever exhibition showed that the notion of a humanoid artificial intelligence dates back as early as 1624 with Gio Battista Bracelli drawing an interesting sketch that later influenced our perceptions of robots.
I urge you to take a look at his sketches and see how much they resembled modern days’ robots.
It continues to go through the history of robot formulation…
As well as the popular media and science fiction literature that include robots…
The rest of the exhibition shows all sorts of robots, in different types, shapes and designation that we’ve all come to know…
How many of those could you make out?
Also, watch this next video to see a demonstration of an interactive robot…
Geek heaven, a wonderful exhibition. Go Taipei!
Looks like a great exhibition!