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.

Updated with comment from VeriChip spokesman:

With the debate over genetic cloning in full swing, hackers could not have cared less at a conference in New York City, where two presenters demonstrated the electronic equivalent of making a copy of an implanted RFID or radio frequency ID chip.

The point was to show just how easy it is to fool a detection device that purports to uniquely identify any individual.

Annalee Newitz (left) and Jonathan Westhues (right) presented their experimentations at the HOPE Number 6 conference in New York City in front of a crowd of hackers, tweakers and phone phreakers.

“This is the first time someone has cloned an human-implanted RFID chip,” Newitz said. “Since I have been chipped Jonathan refers to me as an implanted pet.”

Newitz said she has an RFID chip implanted in her right arm manufactured by VeriChip Corp., a subsidiary of Applied Digital.

“Their Web site claims that it cannot be counterfeited — that is something that Jonathan and I have shown to be untrue.”

The pair demonstrated the cloning process: Westhues held a standard RFID reader against Newitz’s arm to register the chip’s unique identification number.

Next, Westhues used a home-built antenna connected to his laptop to read Newitz’s arm again and record the signal off her implanted chip.

Westhues then takes the standard RFID reader and waves it past his laptop’s antenna. The reader beeps, showing Newitz’s until then “unique” ID. “It actually has no security devices what-so-ever,” Newitz said of VeriChip’s claims that its RFID chips can not be counterfeited.

VeriChip spokesman John Procter said in a phone interview that he had read about Newitz and Westhues work, but the company had not been able to review the evidence. He had no specific comment regarding their “cloning” project.

“We can’t verify what they may or may not have done,” Procter said, adding that: “We haven’t seen any first-hand evidence other than what’s been reported in the media.”

“It’s very difficult to steal a VeriChip … it’ s much more secure than anything you’d carry around in your wallet,” he added.

The message cork board at most conferences is an area to connect with colleagues and friends. At HOPE we found a plea for materials needed before a presentation on Food Hacking.

We’re on scene at HOPE Number Six, the annual hacker conference in New York starting today. HOPE, which stands for Hackers On Planet Earth, is a three-day conference featuring speakers on topics ranging from social responsibilities and building the big “Anti-Big Brother Database” to hacking everyday gadgets like the iPod.

Three notorious hackers — Mark ”Phiber Optik”, bernieS, and Kevin Mitnick — who all spent some time in jail, may swap prison stories on Saturday.

Reuters’ Nic Fulton is attending on Friday. Ken Li will be there on Saturday. Check out HOPE’s conference blog.

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