Robots are Dancing Their Way into the Entertainment Spotlight

We were all very excit­ed to watch the great Lady Gaga trib­ute the late David Bowie. Our excite­ment expo­nen­tial­ly increased when we saw that Lady Gaga invit­ed a chore­o­graphed ABB IRB 120 IRC5 piano to rock out with her on stage. This wasn’t the first time Lady Gaga has used a robot, how­ev­er, we love the fact she is express­ing her­self and cre­at­ing new art forms by devel­op­ing a union on stage with a danc­ing robot­ic piano. 

The piano sat on top of two robot­ic arms and came to life as she began to play. The key­board moved up to meet her hands and the arms con­tin­ued to sway the piano back and forth to the beat of the song. Lady Gaga con­tin­ued to play the keys and flaw­less­ly car­ry on with singing as the micro­phone moved along as well. 

It turns out that one of NASA’s Jet Propul­sion Lab roboti­cist helped make the night a suc­cess. The brains behind it all, Andy Robot, re-pur­posed soft­ware he had pre­vi­ous­ly used and when asked what robot he chose, he respond­ed with ​“We used ABB robots because they’re very robust. They’re meant to oper­ate for 30 years at full speed, in the dark with no heat, with zero loss of accuracy.”

Appar­ent­ly work­ing on live tele­vi­sion with a robot is no easy task. The team had check­lists upon check­lists and back-up dis­as­ter plans if nec­es­sary. The sweat droplets were rolling dur­ing the live set-up as the robot­ic piano team had to face strict time­lines, chaos on stage with bands load­ing and unload­ing, stage­hands unfa­mil­iar with robots, and of course, one amaz­ing rock star and mil­lions of eyes to please.

From roller coast­ers to danc­ing pianos, robots are quick­ly mak­ing their faces (and arms) known in the enter­tain­ment indus­try and their per­for­mance appear to only get bet­ter with each new idea and development. 

If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about ABB robots at Robots​.com or any of the tra­di­tion­al indus­tri­al robots avail­able from the com­pa­nies, con­tact Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Fanuc, Motoman, KUKA, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and ABB. Our staff will work with you to help you design and build the best robot­ic sys­tem for you and your facil­i­ty, so call today: 877−762−6881.