Meet the lap-top dancers
IT grinds and gyrates around a pole, with provocative moves mimicking those performed by humans.
This robo-dancer is the creation of British artist Giles Walker and performs at the Sapphire Gentleman’s Club in Las Vegas.
He says he designed the vaguely humanoid machines both as an art project and ‘a protest about surveillance, power and voyeurism’.
Certainly, no one would confuse the robots with real strippers, as they have heads made from jettisoned surveillance cameras and body parts from mannequins and car spares.
‘I wanted to do something sexy with rubbish,’ he said. Peter Feinstein, the club’s managing director, said he invited Walker’s robots to add variety at a venue popular with visitors to the annual Consumer Electronics Show in the city.
He said: ‘This is our 18th year for the club, and we felt we needed to come up with something new and unique. It used to be just nerds. But we wanted something more creative that would appeal to both men and women.
‘These robots are interesting because of the technology, and they’re a lot of fun. They really are art pieces, originally.’
Meanwhile the electronics exhibition has also shown off exciting new gadgets such as the Foldimate – a £720 Californian machine which folds 20-40 items of laundry in just four minutes. Also on display is Aibo, a robot dog created by Sony which will retail in Japan for £1,294 this year. The foot-long pup understands a few Englishlanguage directions, including commands to sit. She also has a camera in her nose which can act as a webcam via an app.