When our robot overlords conquer us all, they will celebrate with a victory dance. This may be what it looks like when it happens.
Boston Dynamics, the Massachusetts company known for its cutting-edge work in robotics, released footage Tuesday of its famous robot collection boogieing to The Contours’ 1962 R&B hit Do You Love Me? The results are astonishing, and demonstrate just how far not only Boston Dynamics’ creations and the art and science of robotics in general have come.
Watch and be profoundly amazed, a little creeped out, and ever so slightly depressed because they can probably dance better than you can.
The impressive performance features the humanoid Atlas, dog-inspired Spot and box-moving Handle, all of which move with amazing precision and genuine performance skills in the nearly three minute video.
It went viral after it was shared by Reza Zadeh, a technology executive and machine learning expert, who said that the dance made the robots “less intimidating.”
We’ve already seen Boston Dynamics progress from its first gas-powered, noisy pack mule like robots in 2012 to the more compact, electric powered versions that have enough flexibility to twerk for the camera in just a few short years. This version, Spot, is already being put to work in the real world. The robot maker began leasing out its Spot models in September 2019, and they have since been used to patrol oil rigs, assist law enforcement, help on construction projects and in hospitals to help doctors communicate with COVID-19 patients.
Hyundai Motor Group purchased a controlling stake in the company from SoftBank Group earlier this month for $1.1 billion.
From Boston Dynamics’s own post on YouTube:
Our whole crew got together to celebrate the start of what we hope will be a happier year: Happy New Year from all of us at Boston Dynamics. www.BostonDynamics.com.
People love it, and the sci-fi community especially. The Twitter post has over nine million views at this point, and the Boston Dynamics post on YouTube is currently trending as #2 on the entire YouTube platform.
Not only is it likely to be Boston Dynamics behind the robot revolution, they will kick-dance our butts when they win.
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