Dancing robots
A lot of people saw this video of a Boston Dynamics robot dancing to music at the end of the year. It’s a cute video, like the other dancing videos that Boston Dynamics have released in the past, and the fact that we are first coming to know these robots as they dance to familiar music is not an accident.
Forest Gibson, a friend of mine (and Dent passport holder!), has been ahead of the curve on this one for more than a year. Last year, he and some friends launched the first robot talent agency.
All of this sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, but I remember talking with Forest in 2019 about how much of our relationship with any new technology is defined by how we see that relationship reflected in movies, TV, and in other media. There is no shortage of movies like Terminator or I Robot that paint a bleak picture of our ability to get along with anthropomorphic technology. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had some prominent media modeling a different path?
Boston Dynamics has been at the forefront of these kinds of robots for almost a decade, and now that they’re party of Hyundai a lot of their robotic prowess will undoubtedly go towards things like future automobiles or highly enabled “wheelchair” personal vehicles.
But even with a focus on mobility and new corporate ownership, the prospect of having humanoid robots capable of doing humanoid things is too big of an opportunity to put on the back burner, let alone abandon.
I suspect that widespread humanoid robotics is very close from a technology standpoint, but still very far from a cultural standpoint. I am not yet comfortable with the idea of finding one of those robots walking around inside a store, and I doubt you are yet either.
But the robot is certainly capable of it. So I think we are going to see a lot of “dancing” robots over the next couple of years.