Shall We Dance with a Robot Partner?

Posted 7 Jun 2005 at 21:07 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Ever wanted to ballroom dance but were just too afraid to practice with a real person? CNN has an article about a Ballroom Dancing Robot partner. This Dancing robot will make it's first public performance this week at the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. The dancing partner robot is not lite on it's feet, in fact it doesn't have feet, but instead it has three wheels to roll around so it can follow the leader's movements. The robot is able to predict the steps of a human partner based on body movement and react accordingly and even can match the upper body movements of the human partner. Right now it only comes in a pink or blue female version, but the scientists are developing a male version too. We've reported about the ballroom dancing robot before. If the scientists are developing a male and female dance bot will that mean the robots could dance with each other without needing a human partner at all? Interesting. I feel like dancing, dancing, dance the night away!