The new holiday video featuring robots from FEE CTU goes viral. How would they celebrate Christmas if it was up to them?
Robots can be associated not only with labor, but also with playfulness and well-being. In this way, researchers from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering CTU set out to make their Christmas video wishing the robots happy holiday and celebrating the successful year in style. And we are thrilled that our walking robots SPOT, Daisy and Scarab played a big part in this video titled Merry Christmas from the Robotic Bethlehem.
The robotics research at CTU experienced remarkable success in 2021. Let's name the most important one – the university team CTU-CRAS-NORLAB competed with the world's best teams in the DARPA SubTerreanean Challenge, which is considered a "Robotics Olympics" due to its prestige. And guess what – we placed second in the virtual edition!
The video was created by bao-bab production house. "Directing robots was an interesting experience! When you get in the mood for the possibilities of their acting, they perform really well,” said Oliver Beaujard and Nina Zardalishvili from the directing duo.
The story of the video plays with the idea of autonomous behavior of the robots. Although the robots are advancing in their independence (thanks to the work of computer scientists from FEE CTU), they are still far from celebrating Christmas solely on their own. There are hours of programming work behind their movements and a number of human operators. But who knows… Maybe one day everyone will have a personal robotic helper at home which will decorate the Christmas tree for them.