Yesterday was Chinese New Year, which meant that, among other things, China’s state broadcaster CCTV, aired its annual New Year’s Gala. With an average viewership of around 700 million people, the gala is kind of China’s equivalent to the Super Bowl.
Unfortunately, this year’s gala got widely slammed on social media, with viewers complaining that there was too much Communist Party propaganda. (Someone performed a musical number called “Without The Communist Party, There Would Be No New China.” It was a little heavy handed.)
There was, however, at least one major highlight to the program: an army of 540 robots dancing in unison to Sun Nan’s song “Dash To The Peak” in Guangzhou. According to the robots’ master, Li Chao, he usually controls six of them at a time using an app on his phone, but for 540, he needed to build a special antenna.
“Each robot in fact consists of 16 steering engines which are developed by our researchers independently. These steering engines can imitate the motions of human joints, so the robots can move so agilely,” he told CCTV.
The foot-and-a-half tall dancing machines were also accompanied by 29 lit-up drones flying overhead.
On one hand, this is really fun to watch and an impressive technical feat. On the other hand, it’s a little scary. Anyone who’s watched a movie about our dystopian future knows that nothing good happens when you get this many robots in one place.
[Via Mother Nature Network]