A dance crew of four-legged robots from Boston Dynamics appeared on “America’s Got Talent” to perform a synchronized routine to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.”
Their performance was impressive enough to earn four “yes” votes from the judges — but one of the five robots experienced some stage fright, perhaps, and shut down in the middle of the routine. But the show must go on, so nevertheless, the four other robots persisted.
“Can I be honest with you?” judge Simon Cowell asked at the conclusion of their performance. “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.”
Cowell has a point — we can understand the technology better when we see where and how it can fail.
For many years, Boston Dynamics was tight-lipped about the mishaps of its robots, cultivating an image of these perfect, futuristic beings that can do no wrong. But a few years back, the company shared footage that shows how precisely engineered the robots need to be to create the kinds of videos that go viral.
“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, recounting how its Atlas robots would often lose balance and fall while doing parkour.
In a silver lining for Boston Dynamics, the robots’ imperfect television performance might end up being more memorable than a perfectly executed (dare I say, robotic?) dance. Remember that deflated Pikachu?
