Humanoid robots have been making increasingly unusual appearances across India, from inaugrating a sandwich shop to showing off dance moves at public events. Now, another such robot, named Maya has caught
the attention of people, this time by performing an Indian classical dance.
A video shared on Instagram by Sohan Rai, who is known as Zikiguy on the platform, showed the “World’s first Indian Classical Dance performed by a Humanoid Robot!” In the clip, Maya was seen dressed in a traditional Indian-inspired outfit and carefully performing a series of choreographed movements alongside a woman.
Maya is built on the Unitree G1 humanoid robot, an existing robotic platform developed by Chinese robotics company Unitree. Instead of building everything from scratch, the Indian team,associated with Tuesday Labs and students from Masters’ Union, customised the platform with its own software, voice system, personality and movements.
Maya Was Dressed In Traditional Attire
They also gave the robot a distinctly Indian appearance. Maya was dressed in customised clothing and shoes and accessorised with ornaments. The team further modified her appearance using a 3D-printed waist and a human-hair wig.
In the video, Rai said, “We trained Maya to do an Indian classical dance and this is the first time in the world a robot is performing this.” He said that they first used motion-capture technology to record the movements of a classical dancer. Those movements were then used with reinforcement learning to train Maya to reproduce the steps while maintaining her balance.
Towards the end, Maya was seen impeccably performing the Indian classical dance on the Marathi song, Wajle Ki Bara.
“Love The Technology But Robots Can Never Have The Humane Creativity”
The humanoid robot’s performance has prompted a plenty of reactions, with people fascinated by how a humanoid robot can reproduce movement associated with one of India’s traditional art forms.
“Kya mayaaa hai ye, wowww,” said a user.
“Maya toh chaaa gayiii,” another wrote.
An individual commented, “Only people in tech realise this is not a joke and is actually commendable.”
Meanwhile, a person remarked, “Robots and AI are supposed to take over chores, not art. This isn’t going to make society any better.”
Someone else shared, “Honestly I appreciate the effort and hardwork required for the creation but ….. As a classical dancer myself I’ll be honest a robot can just do steps, it can never have grace and divide connection to the audience.”
“Love the technology but I’m sorry robots can never have the humane creativity to any art form EVER,” a different person mentioned.
Disclaimer: This article is based on user-generated content. The claims made in the original post have not been independently verified by News18.
