Although professional sporting leagues have resumed in several countries after shutting down due to the COVID 19 pandemic, games are played without fans inside the stadia. In Japan, a professional baseball team decided to try out a different approach. They deployed robots to cheer the team on.

Japan baseball team Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks recently hosted a professional baseball game against Rakuten Eagles. The team owed by Softbank deployed over 20 robots to dance in a choreographed style to the team’s fight song on a podium in the stand which was entirely empty.

I’m not sure ifthe robots paid to get in. pic.twitter.com/GmpIGtDtt0

— Jim Allen (@JballAllen) July 7, 2020

The robots include the humanoid Softbank’s Pepper robot and several of the Boston Dynamics dog robot named Spot. the four-legged robots were donned with Hawks’ branded face caps and flags. The robots stamped and shimmied in a choreographed dance that is usually performed by the Hawks’ fans before games in the 40,000 capacity Fukuoka Dome.

Although the robots cannot completely replicate routine carried out by some 40,000 fans, it is a reminder of the progress that has been made in robotics engineering. Engineers have been able to design robots that can perform many functions that humans usually carry out and many more that humans can’t do.

In this era of COVID 19, Boston Dynamics Spot has been deployed by countries like Singapore to ensure citizens maintain social distancing. Trial deployments have seen Spot create 3D maps of construction sites and hunt for machine faults in offshore oil rigs. Less routine tests include helping hospitals triage COVID-19 patients and, somewhat controversially, working with a police bomb squad.

Several persons have shared their thoughts since the video emerged, with opinions ranging from admiration to fear and even dissatisfaction. “First they take our jobs. Then they take our seats,” wrote an unimpressed Twitter user. “Everything about this is awesome! Love it!” expressed another. “It is normal that I’m so afraid of this?” tweeted a third. “The Terminator!,” commented a fourth mentioning a franchise of films on robot apocalypse. Expressing the same notion another wrote, “Terminators; so it begins.”

(via)

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