Nao Robots Dance the Macarena Better Than You
A trio of humanoids shows off their dance skills
Nao, the little French humanoid whose software just became open source, is always learning new tricks. We've seen it showing off Michael Jackson moves, doing Star Wars impressions, and performing an 8-minute synchronized dance choreography. Now a trio of Nao robots is busting out some Latin dance moves with a Macarena performance that makes the uncoordinated among us more humiliated than ever now that even machines dance better than us.
The routine was created as part of a computer science course taught by Rudolf Jaksa and Maria Vircikova from the Center for Intelligent Technologies at the Technical University of Kosice, in Slovakia. Their students programmed Nao robots to perform a variety of dances (if you have a Nao, you can download the Choregraphe source files here). One of the students, Boris Raus, from Croatia, created the Macarena routine. "Programming the robots to dance," Vircikova says, "is an entertaining way for students to learn and implement algorithms that explore aesthetic motion, human-robot interaction, and creativity."
Erico Guizzo is the Director of Digital Innovation at IEEE Spectrum, and cofounder of the IEEE Robots Guide, an award-winning interactive site about robotics. He oversees the operation, integration, and new feature development for all digital properties and platforms, including the Spectrum website, newsletters, CMS, editorial workflow systems, and analytics and AI tools. An IEEE Member, he is an electrical engineer by training and has a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.
