Japanese robot learns a few folk dance steps

Scientists in Japan have taught a human-sized robot to imitate the steps of a dancer. They say the prancing “dancebot” could be used to record the movements of traditional dances that are being lost as their performers die off.

To demonstrate the robot’s prowess the team programmed the 1.5 metre tall machine to imitate the graceful sways and whirls of the aizu bandaisan, a Japanese folk routine. To prove its accuracy, the robot can perform alongside a human dancer. And despite its Terminator appearance, the robot is remarkably lifelike.

Shin’ichiro Nakaoka and his colleagues at Tokyo University taught the dancebot — named HRP-2 or Promet — using video capture techniques to record human dance movements. According to New Scientist magazine, these w ere converted into a sequence of robotic limb movements and fed into Promet’s processors.

“They have got it to directly copy human movements. That is very difficult because the joints of the robot are very different from the joints of a human,” said Noel Sharkey, a robotics expert at Sheffield University in the U.K. The advance would allow robots to perform human-like movements on factory production lines.

Although its rendition of the mainly upper-body aizu bandaisan dance is impressive, the robot — produced by Kawada Industries — has difficulty with complicated leg movements. Any step more demanding than lifting a foot is likely to result in the 58 kg automaton losing its balance and falling over. The team published its results in the International Journal of Robotics Research.

Despite Promet’s lifelike appearance and fluid movements there is a long way to go to a truly intelligent robot butler or soldier. “It is not a thinking intelligent robot. What you have got is a set of processes that translate human movement into joint movements for a robot. That is it,” said Professor Sharkey. “It is not going to start copying people doing other things or doing anything really advanced.”