Robots: they’re basically just computers that walk around, so we’re going to start covering them more regularly here at PC Gamer.
And there’s a lot to cover: hardly a day goes where we don’t see a clip of a robot doing something weird, funny, alarming, impressive, or—and this is pretty darn rare, but it does happen once in a blue moon—useful.
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5. Mecha Supreme
Sony built a robot named Ace to play ping pong, finally solving the biggest problem of our times: the endless hours of human-based ping pong we’re all constantly subjected to. Ace isn’t quite up to pro levels, but it did defeat three out of five “elite” players it faced.
It both looks and sounds impressive, but I made the mistake of reading the fine print. This article in the Guardian states that “Ace sidesteps some tricky aspects of table tennis by having an eight-jointed arm on a movable base that does not have to stand on two legs.” Congrats on the understatement of the year. That’s like saying “Galactus sidesteps some tricky aspects of competitive cooking shows by completely consuming the planets the shows are held on.”
4. Bad Dogs
Robot dog with Elon Musk’s face spotted wandering the streets of San Francisco from r/GenAI4all
I’ve had a clawing fear of dogs with human faces since that scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (Incidentally, my clawing fear of being brutally suckerpunched by Donald Sutherland comes from the same clip). So I probably wouldn’t hold it together too well if I came across this dog-like robot that looks like Elon Musk.
Don’t worry, though, they’re not breeding. This dogbot with Musk’s dead-eyed head (well, more dead-eyed than usual) mounted on it is part of an interactive exhibit by artist Beeple, which also includes robot dogs bearing the heads of other monstrous billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. They walk around and poop NFTs. Look, I don’t know much about art, and I also don’t know much about whatever this is.
3. Return to Sender
This is cool, watching a robot efficiently pack itself into a box for shipping or charging or… oh, wait, what are you doing, robot? No, no. Don’t do that. And don’t do that! I went from being impressed to horrified and then kinda all the way back to impressed again. I suspect this may one day be a popular model.
I’ll say this: if I could sleep in this position I’d sure save a lot of space in my bedroom. No need for a king sized mattress, I’ll just fold myself into this grocery bag in the corner.
2. Marathon Mangle
I’ve seen robots fall over before. It seems to be what humanoid robots do more than anything else, honestly. But spills usually aren’t quite this violent. At a Beijing half-marathon, this robot did about as well as I’d do in a high-pressure footrace by immediately falling on its face.
But whereas I would just lie there pitying myself until night fell, this bot immediately begins thrashing around with death throes so violent it flings its own arm off and up into the air. You’d literally think it had been shot point blank with a shotgun instead of simply tripping: shards of the beast scatter as its legs drum furiously against the pavement, until it finally lies still and is carried away on a stretcher. Gruesome.
1. Field Freakout
On April 27, during the opening ceremony of a university, a robot malfunctioned. from r/BGMStock
Hard to say exactly where and when this was from, but another angle shown on Instagram says it took place during a school sports day at Xinjiang. This robot flailed around on a crowded field throwing kicks and punches at a bunch of dancers, falling on its face, and then leaping back up to continue fighting the electronic ghosts haunting it until someone ran out to smother it with a jacket and lead it away.
I no longer fear Skynet taking over and nuking the world. I have, however, begun to fear being fatally sack-tapped by the flailing legs and arms of a berserk robot having a mechanical tantrum. I guess that’s an improvement.