Students teach Boston Dynamics’ robot dance moves, Spot’s act go viral

In the Spot-light

A student team’s project gained popularity on social media as they created a TikTok account for the robot called “SPOTlight,” sharing musical videos featuring Spot. In a video garnering 4.5 million views, student Gigi Schadrack line dances with the robot in a lab, both jumping up on cue, while in another video with 1.4 million views, she ballet dances with the robot.

For Schadrack, the TikTok videos are part of an effort to demystify robotics, gather data, entertain, and engage audiences in discussions about interactions between humans and robots.

“As a dancer, I wanted to explore how bipedal movements could be translated to a quadruped,” Schadrack explained.

Wasif Sami, another student, conducted an anthropological analysis of the project and its reception by the public.

“A gift of going viral meant eliciting a wide range of comments and replies. As a group, we grappled with how our playful, performative content exists in dialogue with higher-stakes impacts of technology. Navigating our audience reaction taught us to consciously situate our work amidst the many uses of robots, as well as to listen openly to the discordant, plural voices on the internet,” Sami said.

Around 1,000 Spot robots were in use globally as of last year, primarily for industrial purposes such as Ford’s. While Boston Dynamics doesn’t currently list the cost of a Spot robot on its website, in 2020, it was priced at nearly $75,000.

The main purpose of Spot, as described by Boston Dynamics’ lead product designer, Leland Hepler, is to reduce human fear and increase comfort with the robot. This is achieved through a variety of visual cues, such as its bright yellow color, directional light signals to help anticipate Spot’s movements, and its dog-like quadruped form.