With an instantly recognizable hook and effervescent melody, Vanessa Carlton's debut single A Thousand Miles hit the 2002 Billboard Charts like a neutron bomb, earning nominations for the Grammy Award for Song of the Year and the Billboard Music Award for Top 40 Track of the Year. Featured prominently in 2004's White Chicks, Terry Crews credits the undeniable smash with helping launch his acting career. The accompanying music video saw Carlton and her piano rolling through Newbury Park, California, and portions of downtown Los Angeles. Twenty-one years later, a team of hobbyist roboticists have brought Carlton's music back to the public ear -- this time, to the streets of San Francisco with an animatronic performer and remotely deployable disco ball. The robot, which currently doesn't have much of a moniker from the team beyond "The Robot," is the brainchild of San Francisco-based aerospace engineer Ben Howard, electrical engineer Noah Klugman, lawyer Lane Powell (with additional assistance from local puppeteer, Adam Kreutinger).

Being virtually hooked up to a human could help robots respond to disasters or other situations that would put human responders' lives at risks. The researchers say that a system like this could be used to help in robotic clean-up operations such as the one after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan in 2011. Humans could have guided robots to navigate around the site more accurately, from a safe distance. And while there's currently no machine learning involved in the process, Ramos believes the data captured from the system could be used to help train autonomous robots.