Meet CHARLI-2, Virginia Tech’s skinny, five-foot tall humanoid robot. His balance is enviable: Jostle him, and he’ll right himself — which is one of the reasons the Navy is using him for research on its firefighting robot of the future. Oh, and as the video above shows, he also dances Gangnam Style.
On Monday, CHARLI-2 will formally meet his flesh-and-blood shipmates at an expo in Virginia thrown by the futurists at the Office of Naval Research. His creator, engineer Dennis Hong of Virginia Tech’s Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory, has a $3.5 million grant from the Navy to help design CHARLI-2′s son, the Autonomous Shipboard Humanoid, or ASH. CHARLI-2, the current test platform for ASH, will take the stage at the Office of Naval Research’s annual science and technology showcase to demonstrate how robots can interact with humans.
As long as they dont run into any alien lifeforms that makes ASH decide to count the crew as expendable, it should be fine…….just fine.
Last time I checked, Ash was still playing with his Pokemon…