The second annual Robot Film Festival is tomorrow in New York! Founded by friend of Motherboard and social roboticist Heather Knight, the festival brings together movies from around the world to “highlight innovation, explore frontiers before technically feasible and investigate the impact of humanity and machinery interrelations.”Our lives are already filled with machinery, making our days even easier. We have come a long way from Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics though, and there is a lot of fascinating discussion and work taking place about what our future will look like as we see an increase in personal robots, technological complexity, and artificial intelligence.The theme of this year’s festival is “Are Robot’s Man’s New Best Friend,” a very pertinent question as we unwittingly incorporate more and more technology into everything we do. The films range from inspiring non-fiction to outrageous fiction, and as a whole they provide an excellent snapshot of our relationship with robots, now and in the future.Some are informative about cutting edge robotics research:Self-Driving Car Test: Steve Mahan from Matt Rutherford on Vimeo.Some are very thought provoking about a future with robots:True To Life – נאמן למקור from Top Less Productions on Vimeo.Some will help you with your halloween costume next year:T4 idents from double g studios on Vimeo.A lot of them are about robots as our friends:Court – Playing with light – Mon ami le robot from Cube Creative on Vimeo.Some of them are ads:The Runner Exploit yourself from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.Some remind us that they’re invisible and they’re already everywhere:
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“Invisible Robota,” by Joe Posner and Ian McAlpin.And some are just heartwarming:Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.You can get tickets here, but don’t worry if you’re not in NYC — you can still check out some films online.