Geeks bored of playing computer games can build robots to play them instead: That was the message from Robot Extravaganza at the Kinnernet invitation-only geekfest in Israel on Friday.

Tal Chalozin and Rafael Mizrahi took the stage at lunch and demonstrated their robot Guitar Heronoid built to rock out to the popular game Guitar Hero. “We love computer games,” said Mizrahi in an interview later with Reuters, “I guess you could call us bored, but this just seemed like fun.”

The two software engineers, who in the daytime work for Israeli high-tech firms, built the robot two months after joining a local computer club called Garage Geeks. “We wanted to prove ourselves,” said Mizrahi. They split up duties: Chalozin took on the robot’s moving parts while Mizrah oversaw the game viewing and computer software development.

“We didn’t want to mod(ify) the guitar, like drilling holes in it or changing the wiring - we really wanted the robot to play the game,” said Chalozin.

The solution was to take a storeroom mannequin and position the arms to hold the guitar. Some cruelty was involved: “The arms couldn’t be put in the right position, so we had to break and glue them to hold the guitar right,” Chalozin said.

Chalozin then built computer-controlled fingers that matched the fretboard and strings in the game. Getting the fingers to press the buttons correctly was the hard part, he said.

The next task was getting the PC to watch the game and control the hands. “I tried to get the PC to watch the screen, but the lighting levels were difficult,” explained Mizrahi. Instead he opted to plug the game directly into the robot, where it was able to work out when to play the guitar.

This first public demonstration received a rock star ovation from the ultra-geek audience hand picked by Yossi Vardi, the organiser of the conference. The conference is in its 4th year, and attendees are all expect to get involved by either building something, demonstrating a cool gadget, or by participating in the attendee defined conference sessions.