These days, the tech world is obsessed with humanoid robots, and every company worth its salt is racing to develop its own bipedal droid that it can push to market. Unfortunately, a lot of these robots don’t seem to work very well yet. Case in point: This week, a Russian company unveiled its much-hyped prototype for its humanoid bot, only to have the machine face-plant onstage in front of hundreds of onlookers.
The robot in question, AIdol, is the product of a Russian company called Idol, which was presenting at a forum from the New Technology Coalition, which The Telegram describes as an “association of companies for the development of humanoid robots.” The bot, described as “Russia’s first anthropomorphic robot,” unfortunately lost balance, fell down, and broke onstage. Numerous outlets have noted the sad irony that the event was playing music from the Rocky soundtrack when the bot took its tumble.
A video of the incident clearly shows the robot’s not-so-glorious debut:
Vladimir Vitukhin, Idol’s CEO, has been quoted as saying, of the incident: “This is precisely the kind of real-time learning where a successful mistake turns into knowledge, and an unsuccessful one turns into experience. I hope that this mistake turns into experience.”
If the recent incident was a little embarrassing, Idol is not alone. Most of the “robots” that have been unveiled in public over the past few years have suffered similar fates. Remember when Elon Musk initially unveiled the “Tesla bot,” and it was just a dude in a suit? Musk has since shared more concrete evidence of “Optimus” (the bot’s new name), but the shame of that original incident persists.
That said, there are other robotics companies that are doing amazing (if not deeply unsettling) things in the same space where other companies seem to be floundering. For instance, there’s Boston Dynamics, the company that brought us the 4-legged robot “dog” dubbed “Spot.” The company has also had some success with building humanoid-style bots. “Atlas,” the bipedal robot produced with funding from DARPA, is notably more capable than a lot of its peers. Again, I don’t know if that’s a good thing for the human race or not, but it is what it is.
