I know that for me, on the dance floor, I am quite possibly at my least graceful. I might be surrounded by only air, but it may as well be oatmeal as far as my awkward, uncoordinated limbs are concerned. About the best I can hope to muster is a horribly dated ‘Robot’ that may or may not be in time with the beat, if luck goes my way.
And so it’s with some dismay that I report that technology has once again surpassed my meager abilities. Yeah, robots can now boogie with the best of us.
As a dance move, ‘The Robot’ goes back a little further than you might think.
Here, for example, are the Jackson Five showing it off with Cher way back in 1975. So if you associate it more with the ’80s, as I did, this is an eye-opener.
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Maybe The Robot colored our expectations of what a robot dancing would look like a little too much because it turns out they’re much smoother than that.
As dancers, robots look to be a step ahead of where you might expect them to be.
Well, maybe it’s just the crew at Boston Dynamics who have made the grooviest ‘bots around. I mean, they’ve shown off some pretty remarkable stuff from their Atlas and Spot robots in the past, from backflips to parkour to opening doors to even washing dishes.
So why not let them cut a rug, too?
In the real world, Spot and Atlas can perform important tasks.
Spot in particular has put its skills to use on job sites — doing things like construction site inspections — and it retails for $74,500.
The human-like Atlas has been shown to dance before but in previous years, its movements were much more herky-jerky, like the Jackson Five and Cher of yesteryear. As you’ll get to see in the video, Atlas has come a long, long way.
And that’s ultimately the point of releasing a video of robots dancing: as a tech demo.
It’s quite lighthearted to see the crew of ‘bots pull off all the moves, choreographed to The Contours’ “Do You Love Me?”
And as tech demos go, it’s certainly an eye-grabber. Even Elon Musk tweeted about it, assuring us all that indeed the robots were real and not computer generated.
Check it out for yourself.
For the video, Spot and Atlas are joined by the wheeled Handle as well. It’s just a bit creepy how good they are, isn’t it? I mean, we all worry just a little bit about robots becoming ruthless killing machines that annihilate all of humanity one day, don’t we?
And now we’re clearly all one step closer to being mercilessly served in a dance battle, too.
Well, good luck to us all in the future!
