Maker Faire 2025

We are very excited to announce HipMonsters.com will be presenting RobotFreedom at this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire, September 26 through September 28th at Mare Island!  We have been training our emotional robots for over a year, living with them, playing with them and watching them grow. Come see our robots in action live! 

Here is a recap of the 2024 Bay Area Maker Faire to give you a preview of what to expect. These are some of our favorite exhibits, from an underwater robot explorer to a giant inflatable cuttlefish car.

Bay Area Maker Faire

This is the Maker Faire Bazaar, where visitor can find all sorts of handmade goods, like dice, pottery, and even 3d-printed hot chocolate.

Metal orrery at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is a big working model of the solar system that is the size of a room. All of the planet’s orbit times are proportional to the real ones.

Miniature house at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is a small model of a bakery with working lights and miniature baked goods.

battle bot at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is an old battlebot, complete with two giant spikes in front and four googly eyes (Maker Faire 2023).

 

 

DIY robots at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is the Humanoid Robot Comedy Show. These robots can move their faces to show facial expressions and look you in the eyes while they tell jokes.

Steampunk DIY robots at Bay Area Maker Faire

This robot is built for battle. This is one of the robots that fights in an arena against other robots. It is remote controlled and has arms that can swing around.

Dalek at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is Dalek FAX, a remote controlled model of a Dalek that moves and talks.

Under water robots at Bay Area Maker Faire

This small robot is built by ROV Tour: Underwater Robotics Adventure. They are remote controlled and have cameras that can show footage of its underwater adventures.

After.AI winning Maker Faire prize

And the award winning After.AI whose 3D printed mechanical flip signs were so fun to watch!

Gear art DIY robots at Bay Area Maker Faire

This amazing clock uses a whole wall full of gears to tell time.

Metal fire insect at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is a part of Serenity, an art exhibit showing three insects that shoot fire at a press of a button (Maker Faire 2023).

inflatable art DIY robots at Bay Area Maker Faire

These are parts of Astro Botanicals Space Garden, which is a collection of glowing handmade inflatable plants.

Inflatable art DIY robots at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is Sepia Lux, a giant inflatable cuttlefish car that lights up. The tentacles and the fins of the cuttlefish can move, and the eyes can change colors.

Truck at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is a truck inspired by a beetle complete with wings and a bright green shell.

Drivable peacock at Bay Area Maker Faire

This is a peacock vehicle that lights up and moves.

We are looking forward to seeing you all at this year Bay Area Maker Faire!

Hope you find inspiration!

 

Maker Faire Bay Area Robot’s View

Thanks to everyone who helped this year’s Maker Faire Bay Area be so special! We are looking forward to seeing everyone next year and are already improving our show. Below is a photo our booth before the event started. It is hard to believe over one thousand people visited us over the course three days!  

Maker Faire Bay Area

Want to see how our autonomous robots experienced Maker Faire Bay Area? Check out the video below, generated based on the stimuli, emotions, and actions of HipMonsters’ two robots over the course of three days at the Maker Faire.

The robots recorded the following sensory data:

💙 Noise: A sudden, loud noise. Represented by the color Blue.

💚 Distance: Motion within 1 foot. Represented by the color Green.

🧡 Movement: Motion within 6 feet. Represented by the color Orange.

💛 Speech: The spoken word “robotics”. Represented by the color Gold.

💗 Touch: Contact on the touch sensor. Represented by the color Pink.

🤖 Frequency of Stimuli: How often or rarely the robots received stimuli. Captured by the Movement of the cube.

🔉 Mood: Happy or overstimulated. Reflected in the choice of Sound.

Turn up the volume of the video! It’s not music you’re hearing, but the robots’ moods given the stimuli.

Since we engaged the Touch sensor at the end of each demo, this means we ran 420 complete demos over 3 days. Our robots have been well socialized!

YouTube player

Happy Creating!

Bay Area Maker Faire Update

The HipMonster’s team was quiet online over the summer but working hard in our workshop finishing up our educational presentation on robotics, Robot Freedom. Here is a quick preview of our Robot Freedom which you can see in person at this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire.

Please note, this material is provided for informational purposes only and is not a guide on how to create the designs. Please take a look at our disclaimer.

DIY pneumatic robot with bell.

Here is our pneumatic robot designed to put a ring into robotics! Learn how to power a robot by just using your own strength and coordinating with a friend. See how many times you can ring the bell!

DIY Wheeled robot.

Our DIY robotic car is completely controlled by our emotional AI platform. It uses sensors to learn from its surroundings and go in the right direction. See it navigate the world with emotions and learn how you can build one too.

DIY steampunk Leibniz Calculator

Add, subtract, multiply, and divide using our DIY Leibniz calculator. A steampunk computer that you can build at your home. This calculator can do amazing math with a relatively simple design. Before there was electronics, there was gears!

Steampunk autonomous robot

See the updated Number Three, now a fully autonomous android with emotions. It takes in information from a variety of sensors and processes the information to change its mood. Help it learn to not be afraid of humans!

Steampunk autonomous robot (centaur)

And Number Two (our centaur robot) has gotten updated as well. The AI platform will soon be available on GitHub so you can build your own emotional AI.

Number Three and Number Two also have a hidden feature when you activate a certain sensor.

We are looking forward to seeing all of you at this year’s Maker Faire!

Happy Creating!