From Wall Street Journal Digits this week, iPad goes down under and gets lots of cheer.

Willow Garage hosted the first robots graduation in history last night in their Menlo Park offices on Willow Road, the same road where Google was birthed.

CEO Steve Cousins and founder Scott Hassan gave an emotional speech about how Willow Garage got started, the vision behind it and everything that led up to this historical moment.

Hundreds of people gathered together for the celebration: friends, fans, employees, a couple of local mayors, press, bloggers and universities. Among the university attendees were the 11 recipients of the PR2 beta program, who flew in from around the world to get trained on their robots this week and to celebrate the honor.

Together with the visionaries at Willow Garage and the Directors of the Personal Robotics Program Keenan Wryobek and Eric Berger, the recipients will work hard in the coming two years to accelerate the growth of robotics research and development and yes, change the world.

Below, Keenan and Eric thanked the open source community, the recipients, other Willow Garagers and of course, the PR2 robots. As the winners were announced, the PR2s decided it was time for them to celebrate too, with a little flag waving and dance for the crowd. I think they were starting to realize that they now have fans.

Later on, the PR2s danced with the attendees and zipped around the floor to show off their abilities. And why not, last night was about celebration and giving thanks to a community who accomplished this great achievement. As Scott so rightfully put it at the beginning of the event – “we can’t do it alone, we don’t want to do it alone.” With more effort, resources, passion and talent behind robotics, advancement can happen that much faster.

A few shots of the event, the speeches, the party and the dancing below. A thumbs up to ROS and the efforts of the Willow Garage team and recipients who are going to work together to make magical things happen in the next two years.

Eric Berger demonstrates PR2 in front of a group of bloggers and press

Eric Berger, Scott Hassan, Steve Cousins and Keenan Wyrobek

The Singularity Hub guys Keith Kleiner and Aaron Saenz

Googlers and friends showed up to celebrate

Yes, that’s John Markoff in the Texai robot

Scott Hassan

Steve Cousins

The PR2 robot graduation ceremony, the first in history

Steve Cousins and Scott Hassan

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

PR2 claps as his audience claps for him

Keenan Wryobek

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Jonathan Knowles, Renee Blodgett

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Photo credit: Steve Brehaut

Kamal Shah and Janet Rae Dupree

The deserving 11 recipients are:

• Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

• Bosch

• Georgia Institute of Technology

• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

• MIT CSAIL

• Stanford University

• Technische Universität München

• University of California, Berkeley

• University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Laboratory

• University of Southern California

• University of Tokyo, JSK Robotics Laboratory

At the Google Developers conference yesterday in San Francisco, developers and attendees had a ‘go’ at dancing with a PR2 robot, brought to the event by the guys from Willow Garage.

The X Prize Foundation’s annual event was held at San Francisco’s Letterman Digital Arts Center this past weekend.

Coined as a radical event for humanity, X Prize Foundation’s Chairman & CEO Peter Diamandis gathered some of the brightest visionaries in the areas of science, sustainability, entertainment, technology and medicine together under one roof.

Jaykumar Menon, Susan Celia Swan

Peter Diamandis

Robin Williams, Renee Blodgett

Bruce Katz on the right

Roger Bingham

Auren Hoffman

Robin Williams

Jonathan Conrad

Jaykumar Menon and John Hagel meet a PR2

On the left, Keenan Wyrobek

Committee members who add their knowledge and time to the foundation include the likes of Sir Richard Branson, John Doerr, Scott Hassan, Reid Hoffman, Arianna Huffington, Chad Hurley, Steve Jurveton, Dean Kamen, Vinod Khosla, Eric Schmidt, Craig Vender and a host of others. In addition to Peter Diamandis, Sergey Brin and Larry Page co-chair and Larry gave a short speech.

The live auction included Taj Jaguar and Airship Ventures packages, Chihuly Glass Art, a Harry Winston Ocean timepiece, a Genome 100, a SpaceShipOne Full Size Replica, an ICON A5 Amphibious Aircraft, a Zero G with James Cameron and a Virgin Galactic Flight.

They announced a new prize platform called “X CHALLENGEs,” which unlike an X Prize which focuses on a global paradigm change over a 3 to 8 year period, concentrates on a near-term technology advancement over a one to two year window. The amount raised is also smaller, ranging from $250K to $2.5 million. The hope is that when these contributions are properly used, the money raised can serve as a powerful economic tool for solving difficult challenges and bringing about authentic breakthroughs.

Bobby Yang & His Unrivaled Players performed during a cocktail reception while Willow Garage robots zipped around the floor. The PR2 robots ‘played’ with attendees and Robin Williams even managed to do the cha cha with a PR2 named “007.”

Tony Robbins, Esther Dyson, Autodesk’s Jonathan Knowles and a few others navigated Texai robots remotely from southern California and elsewhere in the Bay Area and as far away as Prague and Argentina. Below Tony says hello to Peter and laughs with some of the attendees.

Below is a video of Google’s Sergey Brin who addressed the crowd from Utah via the screen of a Willow Garage Texai robot. He says hello and waves to Esther Dyson who was hanging out in another Texai propped in the front of the room. What an incredibly innovative and cool way to experience an event you cannot attend in real-time.

Listen to Ray Kurzweil talk about how far computers have come, and the power of a system that combines doctors with artificial intelligence which can bring high quality medical care to the vast number of humans. A short video clip below.

X Prize competitions provide the opportunity for individuals and companies to make philanthropic investments that are low-risk leveraged grants (teams typically spend in aggregate, 10 to 40 times the purse in research and development) that yield unprecedented returns in innovation, public awareness and support for radical breakthroughs that benefit humanity as a whole.

More shots taken throughout the evening.

Scott Hassan, Peter Farrell

Steve Cousins and Adeo Ressi

Peter Farrell, Renee Blodgett

Eric Berger on the right

Peter Diamandis and Sergey Brin

And, for those wondering what else was on the menu, they served green garlic pistou, fresh favas, white truffle mashed yukon gold potatoes, crispy roti, skywalker ranch herb zucchini cakes, porcini mushrooms, avocado and basil creme fraiche as well as a killer organic TCHO dark chocolate dome to die for with strawberry reduction. I had two. Ouch!!

X Prize Foundation’s Chairman & CEO Peter Diamandis and Google’s Sergey Brin were on stage this past weekend talking to a group of visionaries and leaders about science, technology, innovation and humanity: Peter in the flesh and Sergey through a Willow Garage Texai robot.

Robin Williams beautifully uses his rapid-fire wit to attract more contributions at the X Prize Foundation’s event this year.

Google’s Larry Page addresses a high powered audience who came out this past weekend for the X Prize Foundation fundraiser in San Francisco.

Autodesk’s Jonathan Knowles navigates a Willow Garage Texai robot through the X Prize cocktail reception on Saturday night. Follow along on our journey.

Part IV of Zappos’ Tony Hsieh on sustaining happiness. Here are links to Part III, part I here and part II here.

Below is Part III of the video I shot of Zappos’ Tony Hsieh’s talk on sustainable happiness in San Francisco earlier this week. Part I of the video here and Part II can be found here.