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Dancing Robots Help Preserve Japanese Culture

Posted by timothy on from the pickling-is-a-form-of-preservation dept.

Neil Halelamien writes "As reported on robots.net and other sources, researchers at Tokyo have used the HRP-2 Promet humanoid robot to help preserve moves from ancient Japanese dance for future generations. The researchers used motion capture to record the movements of a dancing master, then encoded and replayed them on the robot. The HRP-2 Promet robots are themselves quite interesting, capable of standing up after lying down and non-autonomously operating a backhoe. The external appearance was created by a designer known for his work on several anime series."

10 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. I am sorry to say but... by deft · · Score: 5, Funny

    I for one CANNOT welcome some japanese dancing fairy robots as my overlords. Maybe if they were veritech and at least transformed, but these robot overlords are way to geisha for me.

    --

    There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    1. Re:I am sorry to say but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      They aren't fairies you incensitive clod, they are robosexuals!

  2. These dancing robots that preserve the culture... by ballsanya · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do the do DDR?

  3. Sick... by teutonic_leech · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Okay, IDNRTFA - but the sheer idea of something like this is a testimony of where we are heading on this planet. A dance is a cultural heritage that should be preserved by human beings, not by robots, otherwise it loses its meaning. If nothing else - the thought of 'dancing robots' really freaks me out - and I'm definitely not a Luddite - just something sick about this...

    1. Re:Sick... by servognome · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To record the moves to be replayed verbatim over and over is insulting to say the least, and verging on the point of disgusting. It certainly isn't right.
      Do you think it's wrong that we record music? I mean we record the sounds and play them over and over, never changing. Saying "robots should never dance" is pretty short-sighted. It could be used for a number of historical purposes. Throw the 'bot in a box for 200 years, and compare his moves to what is being done at the time. Society collapses, and styles are lost, the robot could be an important point of study and revive a dead style.
      From a tech standpoint the robots could also be used to improve AI, so that robots can mimic (or even develop depending on your philosophical view), minor variances based on "feelings" when performing something artistic.

      --
      D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
    2. Re:Sick... by servognome · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Music is auditory, and recording it is very different to emulating it.
      I don't think music is different from art or music. It is created from human expression just the same, only the medium is different. When you talk about emulation that is what your player does, it emulates the music the musician created. An MP3 not an exact replica (encoding loses data), and moreover, it's recorded in a special room and manipulated by all sorts of machines to sound good (see Ashlee Simpson).
      The robot is a recording device, same as a camera, but it functions in 3-dimensions, you can walk around it, you can see things that may be hidden from a camera. Perhaps your objection is that the robot is limited such that it may not have the resolution to capture everything important. Maybe facial expressions are lost, or its incapable to capture an exact postion. I would agree with that. But, as a tool I think a robot is valuable and over time improvements could make it so that what it loses could be comparable to the differences between a live concert performance and a CD.

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      D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
    3. Re:Sick... by dancingmad · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Tell that to the Okinawans; as young people, especially girls, leave the prefecture, they are having a harder and harder time finding people to learn traditional Okinawan dances. Is it better for the dance to be completely lost than for a robot to do it? Surely someone can learn it from the robot, but if its gone, its gone.

      I'm sure a lot of people said the same thing when television could bring theatre into the home. A play on TV isn't real theatre, it loses its meaning.

      Furthermore, it seems to me that you seem to think that the Japanese are all going to teach their robots to dance and they won't have to bother. That seems pretty unlikely. This is obviously another step in getting functioning robots, not a government program to make dancing machines. In short, I call typical American xenophobia.

      --
      "There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
    4. Re:Sick... by willpall · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Your post was well thought out until In short, I call typical American xenophobia.

      I read and reread the parent post and could not find a xenophobic statement up there. Just an understandable feeling of uneasiness about a human artform being preserved by robots. Although I do agree with you that it's better than having that artform completely lost, I still fail to see where xenophobia enters the picture. I call typical American-bashing :-)

      --
      Libertarian: label used by embarrassed Republicans, longing to be open about their greed, drug use and porn collections.
  4. Turn, step, turn... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...kill all the humans. Step, step, turn, shuffle, kill all the humans...

  5. GET HIM!!! by MochaMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is it because I'm living in Japan and out of sync with all of you?

    Living in Japan... out of sync...? Nice try, robot scum -- you'll never take us alive!

    Just like a goddamn robot to go for first post...