Robot watch: May's strangest robotic failures

May brought another round of mechanical misadventures, with robots attempting martial arts, cutting rugs on the dance floor, and staging aerial light shows—only to spectacularly fail at each task. Some mishaps were painfully mundane. A robot demonstrating taekwondo stumbled over a small step, backpedaled into a wall and fell, while a moonwalking machine tripped on stairs, collapsed to the ground and was unceremoniously dragged away as Billie Jean played and the crowd looked on.

Vehicles and exploration bots had their own problems. The Waymo driverless fleet was recalled after repeatedly driving into water, and a Cybertruck was deliberately driven into a lake to test “Wade Mode.” On Mars, the Curiosity rover spent five days shaking free after a 30-pound rock became lodged on its drill.

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