A Japanese robot twists and rolls to music from an iPod in an intricate dance based on complex mathematics, a technology developers say will enable robots to move about spontaneously instead of following preprogrammed motions.
Tokyo-based venture ZMP Inc.'s 14-inch long Miuro robot -- which looks like a white ball wedged between two halves of an egg -- wheels about in time with music from the iPod player that locks into the machine.
At a demonstration in Tokyo on Thursday, the 11-pound Miuro pivoted about on a stage in time to beats of a pop music track played through its speakers. The dance wasn't preprogrammed, but generated by the robot itself....
Unlike older Miuros, which hit stores last August, the prototype is fitted with software based on what scientists call chaotic itinerancy... Other improvements will let users set the Miuro like an alarm clock so it wheels into the bedroom and blasts music at a certain time.
Okay. We should worry about robots capable of spontaneous movement. For example, I don't want a robot deciding when I'm supposed to get up in the a.m. I do not want a chaotic itinerant in my bedroom. But it would be nice to have a critter in the house that'll break into a little dance now and then.
I don't know how we're going to explain it in terms of evolution, though...