Its a far cry from the heart-warming animated world of Pixars WALL-E, but British scientists have somehow managed to fuse robot technology and punk music.
Visitors to a series of punk shows at Londons Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) earlier this month were treated to the somewhat bizarre sight of three pogo-ing robots totally immersed in "the filth and the fury."
The machines, designed by a group of artists and scientists, had been programmed to respond specifically to punk music, according to a BBC report.
The 7-foot-tall padded robots were dressed, appropriately enough, in leather, safety pins, and other punk styles. A collection of processors running in a neural network within the machines was used to discern the differences between different types of music.
The robot brain, for want of a better word, was played lots of punk, reggae, disco and classical and over a period of time, explained Peter McOwan, a professor at Queen Mary University in London, in an interview with the BBC. The robot has learned to recognize and appreciate the patterns of sound in punk music."