By Chuck Martin
A high-tech Russian robot that could even dance turned out to be a man inside a robot suit.
‘Boris the robot’ was featured on the opening day at the annual “Future Intellectual Leaders of Russia” forum, where Boris showed students its knowledge of math, walked, talked and even danced.
The state-owned Russia 24 proclaimed that “Robot Boris has already learned to dance and he’s not that bad,” as reported by The Guardian and shown in a news broadcast on YouTube.
However, bloggers and the Russian website TJournal noticed there were no external sensors and photographs of the ‘robot’ posted on social mediashowed that the robot had a visible neckline of a person.
The robot turned out to be a person inside the suit ‘Robot Alyosha,’ the Moscow-based robot costume maker Show Robots, which markets such robotic costumes for events.
The $3,700 robot suit has a built-in voice transducer, speakers, a microphone, built-in tablet with front camera, LED illumination, monochrome illumination of the eyes and mouth, which responds to the voice or Robot Alyosha.
No word on whether the person inside the ‘robot’ was named Boris.
