Disco Robot Uprising Imminent?

On November 28th, 2009, the 6th Annual ROBO-ONE Gate Competition took place in Toyko, Japan. For the uninitiated (including myself), ROBO-ONE is a series of competitions for bipedal robots. There are lots of different categories (see the Wikipedia link*). I'm assuming the "Gate" category refers to dancing, because that's what the videos I initially came across are of: dancing bipedal robots.**

Here's the 2009 Second Place Contestant, performing to "Thriller" by none other than the late Michael Jackson:



And the 2009 First Place Contestant, performing to "Joyful", by an unknown-to-me J-Pop singer:



Now, I honestly don't see these small, agile, moon-walking bots taking us over anytime soon, but whatever angle I look at these videos from, those robots are pretty impressive. And their flexibility, agility, rhythm, and learning skills will be put to good use as we move further towards the robots of science fiction.

If you want more dancing robot videos (or ROBO-ONE videos in general) this Youtube channel is the place to find them.

*which I'm totally not getting my info from
** My thanks to Gizmodo for bringing this to my attention.