You know this is the 21st century now when you‘ve got robot actors. And I don’t mean the ones that can’t act because they’re too stiff, but real live (in a matter of speaking of course) robots. At a recent event, The Bard’s classic comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was performed featuring, for the first time on stage, an AirRobot who played a woodland fairy. The production was a collaboration between Texas A&M University’s computer science, electrical engineering and performance studies departments. The robot that was designed for surveillance by authorities, was equipped with and about the size of a large pizza, according to a report. In this its debut performance, AirRobot was joined by its smaller buddies a squadron of E-Flight micro helicopters.

The robots were designed by Robin Murphy, a computer science and engineering professor at the University. However well the production may have turned out, it seems like the robots were not very easy to work with and threw quite a bit of attitude since they must have presumed they were the real stars of the show considering they weren’t cheap to make or maintain. It seemed like they were always playing the delicate star demanding to be treated with care. Eat your ‘heart’ out Wall-E!

[Wired]