Robonexus Opens

I only have a few minutes during lunch here to update on the first morning session of the RoboNexus conference.
There is more so I will just touch on a few things here.

It opened with a demo from Team Osaka's VisiON- winner of humanoid division of Robocup competition. A cute little 2 foot tall machine. He drew applause by bending to pick up a ball then drop kicking it and laying down then standing up again. Is this audience easy to impress?

One thing that stood out for me was a definition of robotics by Matthew Mason, Director of Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University:

"Robotics is where computing meets the real world"
The technologies have three foundations: perception, intelligence and action.

Another presenter, Jeanne Dietsch, CEO of MobileRobots, emphasized the "action" aspect of robotics more. She argued that the recent increases in productivity gains have come from information, data and communications improvements. The next surge in productivity will come from improvements in the manipulation of the 'real world.'
I do not know if I buy into that idea completely - but, unfortunately I have run out of time.
Discuss...