“Do you love me?” the robots seemed to ask, as they danced to the tune with the same name. The most common question asked by those who saw that video was whether or not it was real. It was, and if you have a humanoid robot that can maintain its balance enough to do backflips, it isn’t overly difficult to teach it some dance moves. Up until now, humanoid robots like this have largely been a novelty.
Industrial robotics started out as large arms, or sophisticated machines that looked nothing like robots. Then, we saw the emergence of cobots, and a realization that the complexity needs to be placed in the software, not the hardware. Artificial intelligence has made the robotics industry smarter, so maybe now it’s time they became as mobile as humans. Are humanoid robots coming next, or are they the carbon nanotubes of robotics – sounds exciting, but never turns out to be economically viable at scale? A company called Sarcos Robotics thinks that dexterous robots and exoskeletons