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The last thing we’ll see before we die is a dancing robot
The lovely guys at Boston Robotics circulated this video for New Year’s. The video features 2 humanoid robots, a dog robot, and… well, another robot, all dancing to Do You Love Me.
The video is genuinely brilliant on so many levels. Firstly, it is very cool. Great song, excellent dancing, love the idea. Secondly, the technical achievement they are showcasing is breathaking. Like most people, I’ve long marvelled at what they, and other robotics companies are doing. The humanoid robots dance with style, fluidity, and character, and I found it hard to take my eyes off them. I had to keep reminding myself that they are not human, remembering to look at their faces (spoiler: they don’t have faces), to stop my brain registering them as people.
And yet, whilst I enjoyed every moment of the video, I kept returning to the same question: have these guys never been to the cinema?
Surely it would only be possible to create a robot like this if you have never seen a film in which robots take over the world? Hasn’t even one of them seen The Terminator?
Watching the dancing robots, my mind immediately conjoured up the closing moments of a film in which terrifying humanoid robots with no empathy dance brilliantly to Do I Love You before snapping the heads off their inventors, and…
