Tommy Jr. at JavaOne 2008 Keynote

Perrone Robotics brought their autonomous ground vehicle Tommy Jr. to wow the folks at Sun Microsystems’ annual JavaOne conference. James Gosling, the father of the Java programming language, closed out his keynote speech by inviting Perrone Robotics’ Paul Perrone on stage with Tommy Jr. Paul walked out into the audience of roughly 10,000 attendees as Tommy Jr. autonomously followed behind Paul. As Paul stopped, TJr. would stop. As Paul moved forward or backward, TJr. would move forward or backup. All the while, Tommy Jr. was also speaking to the audience describing what he was doing. VIDEO HERE.