Boston Dynamics Dancing Robot

This year Boston Dynamics have already been standing out substantially in the robot world. With robots all over the world performing tasks like never seen before Boston Dynamics has still managed to shine and garner attention, largely through their various array of humanoid or animal robots. Atlas is the robot typically in the news when the topic is Boston Dynamics advances, with its expert backflips and incredible movement skills. However, this time around it’s their arguably just as impressive Spot Mini robot that’s making the news as it appears to be the best dancing robot around.

Boston Dynamics Dancing Robot Rivals Bruno Mars

Last week a video was released of the bot after a long period of no displays of it being showcased. This video was much more light-hearted and fun natured than the others. The video shows the robot shaking and shimmying along with other “dance moves”, even moonwalking to Bruno Mars’ hit song Uptown Funk. Unsurprisingly with its happy vibe, this video has been watched 4 million times already. This is no doubt a genius piece of marketing by Boston Dynamics really painting their robots as something exciting and entertaining, if these bots are ever used in combat (which is likely) it will be ironic to look back at it dancing to pop songs.

Obviously, this robots displays of skills are nothing new for us to see, it has previously been shown moving around effectively along with performing tasks such as opening doors and getting past humans blocking its way. To accompany these impressive yet basic tasks, it has also displayed a decent amount of awareness and understanding of household chores such as moving things around carefully and recycling. The Spot Mini does seem to better the Atlas when it comes to agility and dexterity, seemingly being able to traverse terrain much easier with its 4 legs opposed to the Atlas’ 2. The bot is heavily awaited to be released and is planned to become commercially available as early as next year to the public! Of course, this would drastically change house life and many people would have concerns over the safety of the bots.

Many experts in the field, say that a dancing robot such as the Spot Mini is unlikely to appear as commonplace in households for quite a while, the immediate future in the opinions of many of these researchers is one with smaller more specialized robots designed for very acute jobs such as the Roomba vacuum device.

As for robots in the military, John Baillieul had this to say “Boston Dynamics has been spectacularly successful in building walking robots for DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), but the company is very much a newcomer to the consumer space” suggesting that although there have been interactions, Boston Dynamics are not close to signing any deals or anything of the type with a military based consumer. It is no stretch of the imagination though to say that with the right price tag Boston Dynamics would be more than happy to negotiate.