Iron Skulls Co. Adds Robotic Dog to the Dance Troop and Brings the Moves with Famulus 4.0
Where choreography meets code: a bold new collaboration in motion blending cutting-edge robotics with urban dance.
Iron Skulls Co. dance company kicked off their latest show with a unique new member – a quadrupedal bionic dog with integrated AI. Famulus 4.0 isn't a typical dance performance; it blends a wordless, emotional confrontation between man and machine, played out in a 6x6 meter square. The troops' latest show brings together four exceptionally talented human performers and one incredible robotic dog that explores our relationship with technology in the age of Industry 4.0.
As the Iron Skulls explain, "Famulus 4.0 is an urban dance performance conceived for public spaces. Iron Skulls Co. combines movement, theater, robotics, and artificial intelligence to tell a story without words, yet one that is loaded with questions. Through autofiction, themes such as technological dependence, privacy, family, and intimacy in the age of algorithms are explored. An emotional and digital landscape in which the human and the synthetic coexist, collide, and recognize each other."
The title "Famulus" is Latin for "servant" or "slave," while the "4.0" refers to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which forms the show's central theme – examining how technology serves, and sometimes hinders, human relationships in the modern world. There are very few details on the robotic canine's design and hardware makeup, or how it implements AI; however it looks similar to Boston Robotics' Spot, only with more agility and a level of fluidic-grace.
The Iron Skulls Co. launched Famulus 4.0 back in May of this year (2025) and is set to play on August 9 at the Dance Festival in Les Piles, Catalonia, and on October 3 at FiraB!. In Mallorca, on October 6, at Xixón Dance in Asturias.
Check out tour dates: https://ironskulls.es/en/calendar.
The code is open source and is available on GitHub. You can also explore the roboticists' project on Hackster.