Glimpse into the future: Boston hosts "celebration of all things robotics"
BOSTON – Dozens of robots descended on Boston this weekend, providing a chance for children and adults to get a glimpse of the future.
The technology was on display during the MassRobotics Robot Block Party.
"Robot Block Party is a celebration of all things robotics," MassRobotics cofounder Joyce Sidopoulos told WBZ-TV.
There couldn't be a much better place for the event than Boston, a major hub for robotics.
Featured at the event was robot dog Spot from Boston Dynamics, who's now teamed up with Tufts University and Thinking Robots to get two robots to work together
Simply give a voice command to Spot and the other robot and they can coordinate for a task, such as moving a bottle.
"We believe that in the future, robots will be instructed rather than programmed by the end user. So we want to make interactions as easy and natural as possible," Matthias Scheutz of Thinking Robots said.
Some have concerns about how robots would behave if they were given an unethical task. But Scheutz said that isn't how the technology works.
"It would not do it because it always looks at the outcome stage and reasons through whether they would violate any ethical principle that it knows of," Scheutz said.
Also on display at the event was a robotic tackling dummy named MVP that is being used by football teams so players don't have to tackle each other.
"We just want to get kids inspired to go into anything technical. We have a real lack of students going into the field, and we have no lack for the need," Sidopoulos said.