The recent passing of Rolling Stones’ drummer Charlie Watts was a poignant reminder that the members that make up the legendary band are, in fact, mortal, and will one day shuffle off this mortal coil.
In a world without a living and breathing Mick Jagger and company, the band could take to the stage again in the form of holograms, a medium that admittedly splits opinion when it comes to ways of keeping alive the memory of late musicians.
Alternatively, Boston Dynamics’ robot dog, Spot, could make a great Jagger replacement and even replace the entire band, at least according to a new video shared by the robotics company.
Released to honor the 40th anniversary of the Stones’ 1981 album Tattoo You, the footage shows Spot mirroring Jagger’s moves in the video for Start Me Up, a popular track that appeared on the album.
Thirty seconds in and, as more band members start to appear in the frame, so do more Spots, each one mirroring a different Stones member (though for some reason bassist Bill Wyman gets left out).
The effect is mesmerizing and demonstrates Spot’s extraordinary versatility, after all, few people can pout, prance, and parade quite like the Stones’ energetic frontman.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Spot strutting its stuff. Boston Dynamics has shared several videos in recent years showing its dog-like robot pulling moves to different tracks that include Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk featuring Bruno Mars, and IONIQ: I’m On It by K-pop sensation BTS.
Away from the dance floor, Boston Dynamics has been marketing Spot as a robotic solution for a range of industries, with the quadruped’s API and payload interfaces allowing it to be configured for different tasks that include industrial inspection and mapping.
Ford is one such company that has put Spot through its paces, using the $75,000 robot to map one of its facilities, while Norwegian oil producer Aker BP deployed Spot for inspection work and data gathering, among other activities.
