These Robots Can Entertain at Your Wedding

As this is National Robotics Week, Design News has been looking at the advances in robotics in many fields, such as manufacturing and space flight. Also, you may have seen news about robots taking fast-food orders, robotic dogs, and other interesting uses.

With the use for robotics seemingly left to the imagination, one would think these AI-inspired machines could also find their way into entertainment functions, such as a weddings. That’s what I thought when a distant relative sent a video link to their wedding a few years ago. I figured that some startup company would have programmed a robot to make an entrance into the wedding, use synthesized speech to congratulate the lucky couple, and perhaps even join them on the dance floor.  

Unfortunately, I was wrong. These “robots” are humans outfitted with robotic costumes comprising stilts, LEDs, and helmets and other sturdy but flexible body armor. They can perform some dancing, shoot cannons of foam, pump their robotic fists in the air, and engage audiences in playful banter, not only at weddings but at children’s birthday parties and other functions. They are extra, somewhat costly services offered by DJ and video entertainment companies trying to spice up a social event.

Here’s a YouTube video showing one of these “robots” for hire at a wedding and children’s party. There’s a bunch of companies offering these robot impersonators.

Related:Robots Are Advancing Quickly

I’m sure these “robots” provide fun entertainment and something cool to photograph and post on social media. But to someone who reports on technology for a living, I think these robotic entertainers are a cop-out. True, there’s some technology involved in outfitting their costumes with glitzy lights and giving them the flexibility to move around. But they are still humans outfitted in fancy costumes. There’s no programming involved with getting these “robots” to strut around and interact with the audience.

Surely, technology has advanced enough so that real robots, perhaps humanoid ones, can do some of the same things these impersonators can. If anyone out there has hired actual robots for these functions, please let me know.