If you enjoy watching and learning about cool new Robots you are not alone. Millions watch robot videos on YouTube and now, thanks to Jimmy Fallon, they are taking over your TV as well. Fallon is great at giving demos. To him this is all about the humor, and his audience gobbles it up. But he may also be doing us all a service in helping these creations become more acceptable to humanity. By introducing not just the robots but their creators he is making the robots seem more… well… human.

Jimmy walks his audience through demos of three amazing robots in this clip. The first is a snakebot built by Carnegie Mellon University’s Howie Choset. Howie and Jimmy do a good job explaining what these robots can be used for (perhaps search and rescue, or, if shrunk, perhaps minimally invasive surgery) and even giving a quick demo of how it can climb. Learn more about Snakebot and other snake robots here.

The second is a robot named Sophie, demonstrated by Dr. David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics. Sophie is a social robot and processes visual data. She is meant to process conversational and emotional data and even form relationships. Learn more at HansonRobotics.com

The third is a flying robot that was designed on the model of a butterfly (biomimicry). The company Festo created these ultralight flying robots and programmed them with logic that allows them to operate in a collective. Very cool. Not sure about the use cases for these particular robots, but similar ones could certainly be helpful in many use cases including search and rescue and law enforcement. Learn more at Festo.

Watch all three demos here:

For more on robotics see the Things Cyber Robots Page.

And to laugh a bit more see Things Cyber Humor.