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Journalism of Courage
From sword-swallowing magicians to singing dogs, there’s been no shortage of bizarre acts that have turned up during auditions for season 20 of the popular reality television show ‘America’s Got Talent’.
However, the bar for strange but spectacular performances was raised yet again last week when a group of four-legged robots appeared onstage to perform a synchronised dance routine to ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by British rock band Queen.
The robots named Spot were developed by US-based robotmaker Boston Dynamics. Their routine ran into a minor mishap with one of the five robots shutting down during the middle of the performance. However, all four judges of the reality show voted to advance the dance crew to the next round of the talent contest.
Boston Dynamics’ onstage act could be an attempt to make its bots go viral even as it supposedly struggles to sell the robots which are priced at an eye-watering $74,500. Spot is said to be the most advanced mobile robot in the world. It can be used to perform patrols and inspections. But it is more nimble than humanoid robots and lacks the physical strength required for tasks such as carrying packages or unloading trucks.
At the end of their performance, judge Simon Cowell said, “Can I be honest with you? I don’t mean this in a cruel way. It was weirdly better that one of them died… because it showed how difficult this was.” “So amazing. After 20 years, how can we see something we haven’t seen on this stage? This is something we have never seen on this stage,” said Howie Mandel, another judge on the show.
A few years ago, Boston Dynamics shared a video about how its robots are programmed to demonstrate its mobility like losing balance, falling, and getting up on its own.
“A natural consequence of pushing robots to their limit is that, sometimes, those limits are met,” Boston Dynamics wrote in a blog post at the time. Amid intensifying competition in the robotics industry, the company laid off five per cent of its workforce last year.
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It also permanently shut down Atlas, a hydraulic humanoid robot that was only intended as a technology demonstration. Unlike Spot and its warehouse logistics robot Stretch, Atlas was capable of carrying tools at a simulated construction site and doing actual work.
“For almost a decade, Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists, and leapt over technical barriers in the field. Now it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax,” the company said.
