Your desk job is harder than it looks–and that's why a robot couldn't do it

Many of them grew up playing video games where the challenge was thinking through the correct set of actions, out of a predefined set of options, corresponding to little, discrete buttons on a gamepad, in a virtual world. To beat a video game is to find the right sequence of actions. What many roboticists don't realize is how incredible, and incredibly complex, their own movement is in the real world–even in the most frequently encountered tasks. These categories have their uses, but they also create blind spots for those looking to quantify and replicate the movement of natural systems – or predict the future impact that these machines will have on our lives. In dance, my other professional home, the quirks of human behavior are something to be celebrated, explored, and even exploited.