Robot builders and other makers from all over will be converging on San Mateo this weekend for "the world's largets DIY festival" - the 4th annual Maker Faire Bay Area. Expect to see lots of cool things including the Robotic Solar Electric Chariot, Bruce Shapiro's Eggbot, "robotic" warships (ok, they're not really robots, they're RC but still very cool), Lindsay Lawlor's very cool Electric Giraffe (pictured above, CC photo courtesy of Scott Beale / Laughing Squid), Robomagelan Autonomous robots, Camp Peavy's homebrew robots, Dave Hrynkiw and Solarbotics, the Chess playing robot, Dino Segovis and his Arduio-based hacked Rumble Robots, and, well you get the idea; that's just a fraction of the cool robot stuff to see, so go see it!

Unfortunately, I'm not going to make it out to San Mateo this year. If anyone else is stuck in the Dallas area this weekend, there's a consolation prize - A-Kon, the oldest continually running anime convention in North America. If watching Asian robot cartoons isn't your thing, don't worry because A-Kon also draws a huge contingent of cosplayers who attend, many in robot costumes (see the 2008 A-Kon photo gallery). There's also a sizeable steampunk contingent, and the Dallas Personal Robotics Group will be doing a robot demonstration on Saturday at 11am.