I went to my first Robot convention in Brazil couple of months ago to make a very amateur “news coverage”… pretty interesting though a bit dated stuff. Wrote a news piece about it, will translate and post later on.
Meanwhile, in Japan, there’s even Robot Dancing competitions already!

(Ryuki Ⅱ, performing Joyful, Ikimonogakari – 1st place)
This one happened at the 6th ROBO-ONE GATE.

I know they look kinda quirky and clumsy, but you know, it’s a start.

(Black Tiger Neo, performing Michael Jackson’s Thriller – 2nd place)
There are two main things that are really interesting on these events and competitions.
First, that those robots are aving huge advances in movement, balance and customization.
Something that was very hard not long ago.

(Doka Harumi (Doka Project), performing Yuhi Kimura’s LOVE & JOY)
Second, is the popularization of commercial robots.
Those robots are easily programmable through visual interfaces nowadays. You still have to have some computer programming and engineering skills if you wanna customize it though.
But just a few years ago the only ones on competitions like those were University students and professionals from the area.
Dunno if we’ll get to a Jetsons like, Wall-E like or I, Robot like future with tons of robots going around replacing us in lots of lines of work, but the popularization of robots is starting now (think Roomba).

Source: Gizmodo