Humanoid Robots Run, Dance, and Work the Factory Floor
A half dozen humanoid robots completed a half marathon in Beijing, though their prowess still trails human runners by a considerable amount.
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Human beat machine on Saturday, when humanoid robots raced against live people in a Beijing half-marathon. The stunt hyped China’s robotics industry, but it may not have been the best demo of robotic progress.
Six robots completed the 13-mile race out of 21 that ran. “Tien Kung Ultra,” the first humanoid robot to cross the finish line, lost to the human winner by more than an hour. Other bots overheated, fell, crashed into fences, and dislodged their heads and arms (there was a lot of duct tape).
The half-er wasn’t the robotics industry’s first time going viral. Chinese startup Unitree programmed 16 bots to dance in sync on live TV in January. In the US, bots made by Boston Dynamics are known for their parkour moves while Tesla’s human-controlled bots can tend bar.
Klara and the Run
Humanoid robots may make a quantum leap in progress soon, as bot-makers tap the same tech that created ChatGPT — AI chips and algorithms — to superpower their creations.
“The time has come for robots,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last month, adding that robotics could be “the largest industry of all.” Goldman Sachs jacked up its prediction of how big the robotics industry could grow over the next decade to $38 billion, six times what it had predicted last year.
While dancing and running make for fun marketing, they may not be ideal activities to show off the economic upside of robotic tech. Several companies are testing how humanoid bots could take a lead role in labor-intensive industries such as manufacturing:
- China’s UBTech is training robots to help out at auto factories alongside human workers, while BMW hired humanoid robots made by California-based Figure to help assemble cars.
- Amazon-backed Agility Robotics is testing robots’ ability to move and sort packages in the e-commerce giant’s warehouses.
It’s a Droid Race: The US and China are leading the humanoid robot industry, but tech leaders seem concerned the US might fall behind. Reps from Tesla, Boston Dynamics, and Agility Robotics last month asked lawmakers to put policies in place that could give the US an edge, including tax incentives and research funding. China’s willingness to throw its government’s full weight behind EV manufacturing helped it become the leading EV-maker, and a Bank of America analyst told The Wall Street Journal that history could repeat itself with robotics.
