Researchers from the University of California, San Diego have designed an AI-enabled robot that can perform a Waltz simply by mirroring the moves of its human partner. As far as we can tell, the robot was even able to pull off the ballroom dance without stepping on its partner's toes. To make their dancing robot, the team first designed an AI model trained on human motion capture videos and then integrated it into two bipedal Unitree G1 robots. Using another model, those robots were then able to analyze the motions of humans in front of them and mimic those movements themselves. The result was a humanoid robot able to seamlessly walk, dodge, squat, and dance by copying a human.

An AI that helps humanoid robots mirror a person's movement could allow robots to walk, dance and fight in more convincingly human ways. The most agile and fluid robotic movements, such as Boston Dynamics's impressive demonstrations of robot acrobatics, are typically narrow, pre-programmed sequences. Teaching robots to perform a wider repertoire of convincingly human movements is still difficult. To overcome this hurdle, Xuanbin Peng at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues have developed an artificial intelligence system called ExBody2, which lets robots copy and smoothly perform many different human movements in more lifelike ways. Peng and his team first created a database of actions that a humanoid robot might be capable of performing, from simple movements like standing or walking to more complex manoeuvres, such as tricky dance moves.

Google's humanoid robot goes off road (and this time, doesn't fall over): Watch Boston Dynamic's Atlas learn to trot across the trickiest of terrain Google's Boston Dynamics Atlas has been upgraded with an algorithm that makes the humanoid better balance itself while traversing small stepping stones and rocks. A new way to retrieve'lost' memories: Scientists use... A new way to retrieve'lost' memories: Scientists use... The short clip shows the humanoid standing on a stack of cinder blocks that are placed near a pit filled with rocks and other blocks. The team also explains that the incorporation of angular momentum, as Atlas heaves up its torso when moving its leg at an angle, allows the robot to exhibit'human like balancing motions' In 2015, Atlas competed in what is called the'Robot-Olympics', where the world's most advanced robots compete in a series of challenging events.