To celebrate its acquisition by Hyundai, Boston Dynamics released a video of its robot dog dancing to a song by the group BTS. The video, a true demonstration of Spot’s agility, required long hours of work.
Boston Dynamics, the firm that manufactures the famous robot-chien Spot was recently acquired by the South Korean company Hyundai. To celebrate the occasion, Boston Dynamics posted a video in which up to seven Spot robots perform a synchronized dance to the song IONIQ: I’m On It from K-Pop group BTS.
The video is the result of a collaboration between engineers working on Spot and choreographer Monica Thomas. She must have tried to imagine the movements possible with these robots, very different from those performed by human dancers. Every little detail had to be programmed, but unlike humans, once the routine is in place, it doesn’t need to be repeated.
BTS members meet the Spot robot. © Hyundai
A dance that tests the robot’s limits
This is the third video where the robots dance, after Uptown Funk and 2018 et Do You Love Me end of 2020. In addition to a public demonstration of the device’s agility, the creation of dance routines allows for innovations by pushing teams to approach their robot from another angle. They thus developed theapplication Choreographer, which was used in this video to animate the robots. The dance also helped to highlight light certain mechanical limits, such as sudden movements that can damage his knee.
Hyundai has also released its own video where BTS band members meet and dance with Spot. Even Atlas, the humanoid bipedal robot, makes a cameo appearance. These videos also have the advantage of improving the public image of the robot, damaged after its use by New York City Police…
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