Odense, the birthplace of world-famous writer Hans Christian Andersen, hosted the first international Robots at Play festival 14-16 September 2006. The city was transformed into a fascinating centre for robotic events. The festival was organized by RoboCluster and chaired by Professor Henrik Hautop Lund. Professor Henrik Hautop Lund from University of Southern Denmark is known around the world for his pioneer work in the field of robotics and modern artificial intelligence and, more recently, Playware.

Robo[Rave] Innovative robot music inviting you to join in and play!
The Robots at Play Festival opened its doors to Robo[Rave] introducing a quite new concept for holding concerts where the public were invited to take part and create fascinating robot music using intelligent robotic instruments. The concert were an interaction between professional musicians, such as world famous remix artist Funkstar Deluxe, and a good-humoured audience creating a quite new music genre!

Robo[Play] Construct your own robot and bring it with you on a breathtaking mission to Mars!
Robo[Play] invited children to build advanced robots and to fight through nine harsh challenges in a “field of combat” that were designed as a sterile and hostile landscape from the planet of Mars. Here children of all ages competed with their do-it-yourself LEGO Mindstorms NXT robots. This intelligent play tool help children to explore natural science.

Robo[Sports] Practise sport together with intelligent robots that never run out of steam!
Robots at Play unveiled novel robotics systems that were able to play and practise sports with the audience. E.g. they could shoot at interactive robotic targets and be told how hard and precisely they hit the target.

Robo[Trash] Can you turn an old washing machine and a pile of scrap into a robot?
This was the challenge for local school children. Assisted by competent professionals from Odense Technical College, and there own technical abilities, the children constructed robots the size of humans from old trash, a washing machine and advanced micro computers. A task that required imagination and grey cells!

Robo[Film] Robots invade Café-biografen of downtown Odense!
Filmgoers with a preference for robots and science fiction may have felt their dreams come true when the Café-biografen opened the doors to films like the Star Wars films, Terminator 3 and the cult classic Solaris (1972).

Robo[Bazar] The use of robots is limited by our imagination only!
An exciting exhibition with examples of future robots within a wide range of areas. The audience could for instance see, the field robot that is able to weed and harvest crops, the robot that may take blood samples from you in the future, a robot musician playing drums, robots that can change their own shape, and humanoid robots controlled from your mobile phone.

Robo[Prize] International award for the most playful robotic system!
The prestigious 10,000 EUR Robots at Play Award is not only about money, it is also about promotion, reputation and recognition of today’s and tomorrow’s fabulous robotics systems. Therefore, it attracted huge international attention when the winner of the prize, sponsored by Fionia Bank, was presented at a Award Ceremony during the festival. The prize went to PhD Walter Dan Stiehl and Professor Cynthia Breazeal from MIT Lab, USA for Huggable, an interactive teddy bear.