Don't worry, the robot uprising isn't coming yet. The mechanic athletes competing Hoengseong, about an hour outside Pyeongchang, South Korea are a mess.
Eight robotics teams from South Korea's research institutes, universities and a private company competed in a tournament called "Edge of Robot: Ski Robot Challenge." The goal? Race robots down a ski slope without crashing and take home $10,000.
The whole tournament is pretty adorable. This leashed robot, named Ludobi, made it through the slaloms without hitting any obstacles, but had its human creators trotting after it.
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But Taekwon V -- dressed in children's skiwear and named after a Korean cartoon -- had a more difficult time, and seemed to crash into every pole. Here's a video of the robot from last month.
It got the hang of it eventually. As the above video by Minirobot Corp shows, Taekwon V can sense when to turn by identifying the colors of the poles it's supposed to avoid.
The little robots captured people's hearts.
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And it made people really reconsider what humanity is doing with its resources.
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The Edge of Robot tournament was crowdfunded. Its Facebook page includes stats about every robotic athlete. To qualify, each competitor had to have a humanoid figure, standing on two legs that bent at the knee joints.
If Black Mirror was a sitcom instead of a technological horror anthology, this would probably be it.
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The little guys are at least trying their best.
[h/t:The Verge]
Topics Artificial Intelligence Olympics
