See Boston Dynamics robots shake their butts to root for baseball team
An army of Spot and Pepper robots root, root, root for their Japanese home team.
- Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year" award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Take your robot army out to the ball game.
Take me out to the ball game. Take me out to the ... crowd with the robot cheerleaders? A video shared Tuesday showed Boston Dynamics' famed robot dog, Spot, paired with its semi-humanoid sibling, Pepper, cheering at a Japanese baseball game. And not just one Spot, and one Pepper -- there was a small army of the robot dogs and humanoids, wearing hats, waving flags, and in the case of the Spot robots, uh, wagging their behinds.
Boston Dynamics is owned by Japan's Softbank , and the 'bots were cheering for the company team, the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, at a game against the Rakuten Eagles, according to SoftBank. Since there are no human spectators due to the coronavirus pandemic, the robots liven up the otherwise-empty stands.
The robots will perform at games throughout the month of July. And though they may not win any dance competitions, don't get judgy, they're working on improving.
"I am practicing and practicing every day," SoftBank quotes Pepper as saying.
If you want your own Spot, they're just $74,500 (about £59,341 AU$107,116), but are available only to businesses, not for individual homes.
