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A12 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 22 January 2021
Behind those dancing robots, scientists had to bust a move

By RODRIQUE NGOWI What was on display was
WALTHAM, Mass. (AP) — a results of long, hard work
The man who designed fueled by a determination
some of the world's most to program the robot to
advanced dynamic robots dance to the beat, he says.
was on a daunting mission: "We didn't want a robot
programming his creations doing robotlike dancing.
to dance to the beat with We wanted it to do human
a mix of fluid, explosive and dancing and, you know,
expressive motions that are when a human dances,
almost human. the music has a beat and
The results? Almost a year their whole body moves to
and half of choreography, it — their hands, their body,
simulation, programming their head," he says. "And
and upgrades that were we tried to get all of those
capped by two days of things involved and coordi-
filming to produce a video nated so that it, you know,
running at less than 3 min- it was ... it looked like the
utes. The clip, showing ro- robot was having fun and
bots dancing to the 1962 hit really moved with the mu-
"Do You Love Me?" by The sic. And I think that had a
Contours, was an instant hit lot to do with the result of
on social media, attracting the production."
more than 23 million views Marc Raibert, founder and chair of Boston Dynamics stands beside one of the company's At- Teaching robots to dance
during the first week. las robots during an interview and demonstration, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021, at their facilities in with fluid and expressive
It shows two of Boston Dy- Waltham, Mass. motions was a new chal-
namics' humanoid Atlas Associated Press lenge for a company that
research robots doing the spent years building robots
twist, the mashed potato in the middle of develop- robots reconcile balance, dancing was so good that that have functional abili-
and other classic moves, ment in order for it to be bouncing and doing a per- some viewers online said ties like walking, navigating
joined by Spot, a dog- strong enough and to have formance simultaneously. they couldn't believe their in rough terrain, pick things
like robot, and Handle, a enough energy to do the "So we went from having eyes. Some applauded up with their hands and use
wheeled robot designed whole performance with- very crude tools for doing the robots' moves and attached advanced sen-
for lifting and moving boxes out stopping. So that was a that to having very effec- the technology powering sors to monitor and sense
in a warehouse or truck. real benefit to the design," tive rapid-generation tools them. Others appeared to many things, Raibert says.
Boston Dynamics found- Raibert says. so that by the time we were be freaked out by some of "You know, our job is to try
er and chairperson Marc The difficult challenge of done, we could gener- their expressive routines. and stretch the boundar-
Raibert says what the ro- teaching robots to dance ate new dance steps very Others added that what ies of what robots can do,
bot maker learned was far also pushed Boston Dy- quickly and integrate them they were seeing was prob- both in terms of the outer
more valuable. namics engineers to de- into the performance," ably computer-generated research boundary, but
"It turned out that we need- velop better motion-pro- Raibert says. imagery, or CGI. also in terms of practical
ed to upgrade the robot gramming tools that let The quality of the robots' Not so, Raibert says. applications. q

Facebook's oversight board to rule on Trump ban

made the right decision to not set Facebook policies nently banned Trump from
suspend Trump after he in- or decide if the company its platform. CEO Jack Dors-
cited his supporters to storm is doing enough to enforce ey defended his compa-
the U.S. Capitol in a deadly them in the first place. ny's Trump ban in a philo-
assault on Jan. 6. But it said Its 20 members, which will sophical Twitter thread last
it's referring the matter to eventually grow to 40, in- week, saying that resulting
the oversight board for clude a former prime min- risk to public safety created
what it called an "indepen- ister of Denmark, the for- an "extraordinary and un-
dent judgment" on uphold- mer editor-in-chief of the tenable circumstance" for
ing the decision. Guardian newspaper, the company.
Facebook's panel is in- along with legal scholars, But he acknowledged that
tended to rule on thorny human rights experts and shows of strength like the
content issues, such as journalists such as Tawakkol Trump ban could set dan-
when posts constitute hate Karmanm, a Nobel Laure- gerous precedents, even
speech — or if the deci- ate and journalist from Ye- calling them a sign of "fail-
sion to ban a world leader men, and Julie Owono, a ure." He suggested that
President Donald Trump speaks to crowd before boarding Air
Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Wednesday, Jan. was the right one. It is em- digital rights advocate. Twitter needs to find ways
20, 2021. powered to make binding The first four board mem- to avoid coming to have to
Associated Press rulings — that is, ones that bers were directly chosen make such decisions in the
can't be overturned by by Facebook. Those four first place and lamented
By BARBARA ORTUTAY independent oversight CEO Mark Zuckerberg — then worked with Face- the fact that they highlight
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — board, setting up a major on whether posts or ads vi- book to select additional the extraordinary power
Facebook is passing the test of the recently estab- olate the company's rules. members. Facebook also that Twitter and other Big
buck for its indefinite sus- lished panel. Any other findings will be pays the board members' Tech companies can wield
pension of former president The social media giant said considered "guidance" by salaries. without accountability or
Donald Trump to a quasi- Thursday that it believes it Facebook. The board does Twitter, by contrast, perma- recourse.q