Monday, January 17, 2011
Robot Japan 2011 - Dance Contest (Video)
Robots Dreams: "One of the most surprising and delightful aspects of hobby level robotics in Japan is the wealth of different competitions and styles. On any given weekend you can find humanoid robots battling it out in the ring, micromouse robots solving and racing through mazes, line followers blazing around the track, underwater robots plunging to new depths, and flying robots soaring skyward autonomously.
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3 comments:
Wow. What will they think of next.
What's so impressive is that you can see two viewpoints considered, often within the same programming of a robot's routine: 1. How do I make this robot do something that is easily and familiarly recognizable as dancing? 2. What can I do with a robot that a human can do (and still feels like dancing)? This balance comes into question whenever using a new technology in a meaningful way. How do you make it familiar enough that a human audience will be compelled, but also how do you push the technology to create something new and beyond normal human capabilities? What was especially compelling in those clips was seeing the fan dance - tying in a centuries old tradition. It would be interesting to see how one could take such a distinctive and ancient custom and further imbue the "modernness" of the technology.
I like the fact that these competitions are going on. It shows that what we are interested in these days as a culture is growing in complexity. Anyone remember Robot Wars? Who knows, maybe in a few years we might see more autonomous humanoid tech coming down the pipe that might be applicable to the stage, rather than themed environments. With sophisticated automation and show control starting to push the limits, it could happen in the next ten years.
Also, I completely agree with Cass in that the Noh performance was pretty amazing.
Part of me is terrified by this (images of giant dancing cat-girl robots wreaking havoc across the globe spring to mind...), but nevertheless it's mind-blowingly impressive, too. The articulation of these robots, even on such a smaller scale than a human one, is amazingly accurate and more-so I would have expected. The question now becomes not, "How do we do this?" but, "WHY do we do this?" Or perhaps more accurately stated, "What do we gain, artistically or otherwise, by being able to do this?" Will we be seeing robots performing Noh Theater and is that any better for Noh Theater than humans doing it?
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