Meet the Robot Centaur: When Machines Stop Looking Human

File this one under technology meets nightmare.

This is a design, and I'm going to preface this, that the company did this on purpose.

I don't know why, don't understand why they would go this way, but okay.

It is a robot centaur designed to save lives, but it looks like a nightmare.

Basically, cross Freddy with any one of the horse movies you've ever watched, you probably would come up with this thing.

Somewhere in Auburn, California, of course, a robotics startup called Satris looked at two great religions of modern robotics, the bipedal humanoid, of course, and the robot dog, yeah, okay, and decided that they were both not quite right.

So of course, you know, the thing of nightmares, they decided to create something they named Three Halves, a machine standing roughly two meters tall with a humanoid torso grafted onto a four-legged locomotion base with an angular horn skull and illuminated eyes and power tools where its hands should be.

It is quite literally a centaur.

It is quite literally the fertile ground for the next big nightmare movie.

I mean, this is terminated to the next level, but they actually made this thing.

It's also the stuff of nocturnal horror, so much so you might think it's a joke.

The company did not respond to the reporter reaching out to find out.

But strip away the demonic styling, and they did that deliberately.

According to the company, it connects the design to the brand.

I'm not sure I want a brand of mine to be connected with something so hideous, but okay.

You do what you got to do.

The brand is actually named after the female version of the Greek satyrs, and Three Halves becomes the latest entry in a long parade of form factor gambling.

What do I mean by that? Right now, as the industry is developing robots, they're trying to decide what does a robot look like based on the application that it's going to be used for.

Obviously, if it's in a factory, there's certain needs and demands and capabilities that it needs to have.

If it's going to be an assistant in a home, it needs to look a different way.

Obviously, we'd want it to look more personal and less machine-like.

Think iRobot, maybe, would be a thing.

But I digress.

They're trying to figure it out.

Let me give an example of all the ways that they're taking this approach.

File this one under technology meets nightmare.

This is a design, and I'm going to preface this, that the company did this on purpose.

I don't know why, don't understand why they would go this way, but okay.

It is a robot centaur designed to save lives, but it looks like a nightmare.

Basically, cross Freddy with any one of the horse movies you've ever watched, you probably would come up with this thing.

Somewhere in Auburn, California, of course, a robotics startup called Satris looked at two great religions of modern robotics, the bipedal humanoid, of course, and the robot dog, yeah, okay, and decided that they were both not quite right.

So of course, you know, the thing of nightmares, they decided to create something they named Three Halves, a machine standing roughly two meters tall with a humanoid torso grafted onto a four-legged locomotion base with an angular horn skull and illuminated eyes and power tools where its hands should be.

It is quite literally a centaur.

It is quite literally the fertile ground for the next big nightmare movie.

I mean, this is terminated to the next level, but they actually made this thing.

It's also the stuff of nocturnal horror, so much so you might think it's a joke.

The company did not respond to the reporter reaching out to find out.

But strip away the demonic styling, and they did that deliberately.

According to the company, it connects the design to the brand.

I'm not sure I want a brand of mine to be connected with something so hideous, but okay.

You do what you got to do.

The brand is actually named after the female version of the Greek satyrs, and Three Halves becomes the latest entry in a long parade of form factor gambling.

What do I mean by that? Right now, as the industry is developing robots, they're trying to decide what does a robot look like based on the application that it's going to be used for.

Obviously, if it's in a factory, there's certain needs and demands and capabilities that it needs to have.

If it's going to be an assistant in a home, it needs to look a different way.

Obviously, we'd want it to look more personal and less machine-like.

Think iRobot, maybe, would be a thing.

But I digress.

They're trying to figure it out.

Let me give an example of all the ways that they're taking this approach.