In a stunning dance video that’s part celebration of incredible engineering achievement and part ad for the robotics company, Boston Dynamics showcased four of its robots performing fully choreographed dance moves for The Contours hit song ‘Do you love me’.
The MIT spin-off sells its lifelike robots to warehouses, police, utility companies, laboratories and factories to perform tasks better and more safely than humans.
To show just how far the skills of its robots have come, Boston Dynamics had its robots do the spin, the mashed potatoes and some seriously complicated dance moves on Tuesday that were part impressive and part creepy.
Tesla CEO and renowned artificial intelligence skeptic Elon Musk
noted: “This is not CGI” – even if the impressive show was incredible.
Boston Dynamics has not quite achieved the business success that some robotics champions expected or hoped for. The company only names a handful of customers and has had three different owners over the past three years: Google (GOOGL) bought it in 2013 and then sold it to Softbank in 2017 before Hyundai bought it earlier this year.
The company began selling its robot dog Spot to US companies in June for $ 74,500 each.
Spot, seen in the video featuring the more humanoid Atlas robots and the wheeled Handle robot, is Boston Dynamics’ best-known product. The four-legged robot has gained attention for the tasks it can perform, including running, climbing stairs, and even reminding people to practice social distance in the Covid-19 era. It is usually used for site inspections or similar situations.
But Atlas stole the show in the video “Do you love me”. Last year, Boston Dynamics showed Atlas performing parkour tricks, including backflips, mid-air flips, and 360-degree turn-around jumps. This year’s video was stunning by comparison, showing just how far Atlas’s capabilities have come in a year.
Atlas was a convincing dancer, performing nimble jumps and high leg kicks in rhythm.
