Japanese industrial robot learns to dance
posted Jan 13th 2005 9:14AM
Let's face it. The life of an industrial
robot can be pretty tedious. Take Promet, an anime-inspired bot built by Japan's Kawada Industries. The company
typically rents the robot out for construction jobs, and in general views it as nothing more than a "humanoid robot
R&D platform." Fortunately, there are those who believe robots can aspire to the higher arts, and they've taken it
upon themselves to give Promet a new calling. Katsushi Ikeuchi, a professor of engineering at Tokyo University, has
programmed the robot to peform traditional Japanese dance. According to Ikeuchi, it's a way to preserve Japan's
cultural heritage. We think that now that Promet's discovered its inner dancer, it won't be long before we encounter it
on the dance floors of Tokyo grooving to the beat.
[Via carbongeek]
It's funny how Yahoo put this story in their 'Oddly Enough' section rather than 'Technology', or 'Entertainment'.
It is odd now, but it will be Entertainment-Technology in a few years.
When it learns some lindy-hop and balboa, call me.
Yeah, but can it do the Napolean Dynamite dance?
Wow a fellow swing dancer, well at least someone who knows about lindy and bal.
Man i want to see one of these do the mr.roboto dance. It would hilarious. Now to get an ipod version of it...
I, for one, welcome our new dancing robot overloards.
/couldn't help it/
Are there any videos out there of the robot dancing?