What's Up with the Dancing Robots?

Lately, many humanoid robot producers race to produce the best dancing robots they can. The most human-like, the most natural ones, the most fluid movements...

What probably started as a way to say... "Look, our robots can dance too!", in an effort to make them easier to accept, it has now started quite a race between the producers to show that their robot is the better dancer or at least that they can also dance like others are doing.

Really, who is going to buy a dancing robot?

Ideogram made this ^

But that's not the point, is it? What seems like a stupid thing to teach a robot to do when there are so many other things more productive, has a purpose.

Compared to humans, humanoid robots' movements seemed rather clumsy and artificial (which they are, artificial I mean), even if they are precise (sometimes especially because of that). At least at the beginning. Now, they've gotten better. But even now, you still see robots being anchored in case they make the wrong move and fall. Or if they go a little crazy when you want to change their settings, as we have seen...

Humanoid robots, as their name suggests, mostly try to imitate humans. However, unlike humans, many are capable of movements inaccessible to humans, like rotating their torso, legs or arms by 180 degrees. For something that I suppose was designed with the purpose of blending in, probably not the best features, although they help for functionality.

Anyway, back to dancing robots. One of the human activities that significantly improves coordination and fluidity of movements is dancing. That's why I believe we see so many dancing robots out there. To help them improve the way they move and be less awkward than they are today. Although, I'm not sure what's more awkward: to have a machine that looks and moves like a machine, or to have one that looks and moves like a human.

I do suppose we will start seeing them regularly everywhere in a couple of years, so we'd better get used to them. Either that or start building robot and AI-free, closed communities, which I'm sure some will, or live in the jungle.

The real mess will be legal issues when their numbers grow. When it does something bad, who will be to blame: the producer, the owner, or the robot? Others have thought of that too already, but no one knows the best solution yet, probably because we don't know when robots (i.e. the software that runs them) will be capable to be held accountable for their actions. Might take some time before that happens...

Posted Using INLEO