[michaelt]

To be more precise: I think they have a fixed repertoire of moves that they can blend together and slightly tweak on the fly, but only within certain limits.

This would also be normal for human performers - touring ballet companies travel with their own flooring the dancers are used to pirouetting on.

At the 40 second mark every robot does a backflip then when landing hops their supporting leg while pointing the toe of their working leg. Which works fine and looks great! But they arrive in that pose with a certain amount of momentum and needing a certain amount of grip on the floor.

So this is a rehearsed, tested performance - not proof we’ll have firefighter robots doing parkour through burning buildings any time soon!

[bigbadfeline]

> To be more precise: I think they have a fixed repertoire of moves that they can blend together and slightly tweak on the fly, but only within certain limits.

Human acrobats do the same, they know a few fixed tricks and practice them often in order to stay in shape. The point here is to compare the dynamic abilities of bots vs those of humans, not vs some pink unicorns - the latter comparison isn't informative because there aren't any jobs for pink unicorns just yet.

> So this is a rehearsed, tested performance - not proof we’ll have firefighter robots doing parkour through burning buildings any time soon!

A bot assisted by humans can do better than them in a burning building, the lack of need for heavy SCBAs would allow the bot to perform acrobatics scripted by a human at the time of action.

[ethbr1]

> not proof we’ll have firefighter robots doing parkour through burning buildings any time soon!

I wonder how similar friction is across varieties of standard issue corporate carpet...