October 20, 2012

Dance Robot, Dance!


This robot has rhythm and can dance Gangnam Style.

It is called CHARLI-2 (Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence--Version 2).

Charlie was developed by Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa).

At five feet tall, CHARLI is the United States' "first full-size humanoid robot."

Charlie can do things like walk, turn, kick, and gesture--he is agile and coordinated--and as you can see can even dance and also play soccer!

One of the things that makes CHARLI special is his stabilization technology--where it can orient itself using sensors such as gyroscopes.

According to Wired Magazine (19 October 2012), The Office of Naval Research has provided a grant of $3.5M to CHARLI's creator to develop a nextgen robot called the Autonomous Shipboard Humanoid (ASH) to work aboard Navy ships in the future and interact with humans.

CHARLI won the Time Magazine "2011 Best Invention of the Year" as well as the Louis Vuitton Best Humanoid Award.

While the CHARLI robots still move relatively slowly, are a little awkward, and are almost in a child-like "I dunno state," we are definitely making exciting progress toward the iRobot of the future--and I can't wait till we get there.

For me, I see the potential and this robot can certainly dance circles around me, but that's not saying much. ;-)

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