If I live to be a thousand, I will never understand why people want to ski. It’s all the fun of falling down the side of a mountain combined with the thrill of getting frostbite on your face and extremities. If I never have to hear some 28-year-old day trader say the word gnar-gnar again, I will live a happy life.
While automation is threatening to disrupt the world economy and cause a massive concentration of wealth that could lead to massive poverty and civil unrest, we are building more and more robots that will do jobs that humans legitimately don’t want to do, like having sex with you or being a woman in Saudi Arabia. You can add skiing to that list, as just outside of where the Winter Olympics are being held, we’ve also had the first-ever robot skiing contest, the “Edge of Robot: Ski Robot Challenge” contest. It didn’t have the word Olympics in it because the IOC is notoriously litigious, even though Robolympics is sitting right there.
As reported by The Verge, the contest paid $10,000 to the winner, which doesn’t seem like enough money to build a robot that can ski. They also put the robots in little skiing outfits which seems completely unnecessary but also adorable, like when you put a baby in a three-piece suit.
See that? There’s no reason for that, that baby isn’t going to some important baby meeting in the world’s most adorable boardroom, but I’m glad it happened. Same with robots in ski suits.
Tijdens de Olympische Spelen #OS2018 doen ook #robots een poging om te #Skiën bij de #Robot #Ski #Challenge. Donderdag meer hierover @NPORadio5 en vrijdag @NPO1. Hier alvast de eerste wedstrijdbeelden. Opzij, opzij, opzij… => https://t.co/QjfHwONYKW pic.twitter.com/c5glsL5RvB
— Richard Lamb (@RichardLamb) February 12, 2018
Look at that, it’s like Short Circuit 3: Johnny 5 Goes To Aspen. That little guy was the winner, named Taekwon V, after this amazingly terrible 1970’s Korean cartoon that is 100% a Mazinger Z rip-off.
It’s nice to see robots enjoying recreational activities for once instead of falling in with a bad crowd like those BattleBots. Unfortunately, Russia’s robot was disqualified for using performance-enhancing motor oil, but I think we were all expecting that to happen anyway.