This Robot Trying to Dance Like Michael Jackson But Wiping Out Pathetically in Front of a Crowd Perfectly Illustrates the Industry’s Deep-Seated Problem

An amazing video has been making the rounds today.

It shows a humanoid robot strides out in front of a crowd, busting moves to Michael Jackson’s 1983 smash hit “Billie Jean.” It starts out impressive enough, with the bot pulling off some deft footwork — but trouble starts when it boogies straight into a large step on the stage, sending it stumbling with jerky, inhuman movements.

It almost seems as though the bot is going to recover as it regains its footing and segues into a passable moonwalk, one of Jackson’s most iconic moves. But then it strides back into that dastardly step again, this time wiping out so badly that it crumbles into a lifeless heap as a human technician emerges to drag its inert body off stage.

The video — which the Daily Mail sleuthed out was at an event at a “robot store” called Future Era in Shenzhen, China — inspired predictable online waves of jokes, derision, and pathos.

But it’s also a perfect illustration of the core problem with almost all humanoid robotics demos you see online. Though the clips give the impression that the bots are making incredible strides at pulling off complex moves in dynamic spaces — remember that video a few months back that showed robots tearing up a stage as backup dancers? — the reality is that what we’re typically seeing is a carefully pre-programmed routine.

In other words, everything goes great in these types of demos until the moment something unexpected happens, like the robot in today’s viral video tripping on the step.

That’s all well and good if your goal is to wow an audience, but it shows how far we have to go before robots can do anything practical. Vacuuming or washing dishes seem like simple tasks, but the infinite variables in a messy kitchen or living room all represent unexpected hazards ready to trip up an unprepared robot servant.

Probably the best illustration of the level at which humanoid robots are really operating is a counterpoint viral sensation this week: the robotics company Figure livestreaming one of its own humanoid robots sorting packages on a conveyer belt. It’s a constrained domain — everything is a package, the bot doesn’t need any fancy footwork, et cetera — but it’s still surprisingly clunky, only barely edging out a human intern who competed against it (and who, you might argue, had an incentive to lose to make the company’s tech look more impressive.)

So consume viral humanoid robot content with skepticism. Robots doing acrobatic tricks and…