The IEEE Spectrum has compiled a really amusing compilation of an assortment of anthropomorphic robots falling down as they “ran” the course at the DARPA Robotics Finals Challenge that took place this past weekend in Pomona, California.
As much as nobody wanted to see a robot fall, everybody wanted to see a robot fall, and the possibility of falls (and reality of falls) kept everyone watching on the edge of our seats. …“It’s amazing how we anthropomorphize these things,” DARPA program manager Dr. Gill Pratt said yesterday at a media briefing. “It’s a pile of aluminum and copper wire and software. I don’t cheer for my laptop. But people cheer for these [robots]. And of course when it falls, we all feel terrible, ‘Uh, it got hurt.’ ”
