Humanity’s dancing skills just got served by a bunch of tiny Japanese robots.
Quite frankly, the new wave of dancing competition shows on television bores me. If the participants in these shows were say, robots, maybe I’d be a little more interested. Japan agrees wholeheartedly, as evidenced by its recent Robot Japan Zero dance competition, .
Robot Japan Zero is a “robot dance and fight competition” that allowed Japanese roboticists to pit their creations against each other in both 1-on-1 combat and dance battles. The robots brought to the competition were not only impressive feats of mechanical construction, but they also had some sweet moves.
Anthropomorphic cat robot (above) is the master of hand… er, paw movements. Cat-girl below gets more sassy with it.
Another roboticist went classical, creating a dancer in traditional garb that uses fans.
As for the “fight” portion of Robot Japan Zero, one battle put what looks like a fencing penguin against an agile bug-man-thing. They basically fall over a lot, but the most impressive part is how these guys just get right back up.
The potential of robots to take over the world could be greatly exaggerated, because these guys don’t appear to have very powerful combat skills. I think a good football kick would take them out in about a second. If anything, it’s more likely that robot dancers will shame us with how much better they can pop it and lock it.
Source: Plastic Pals, via PopSci
