Over the previous decade, producers of humanoid robots have tried to make their creations more and more human-like. However right here in 2024, we appear to be seeing a wierd shift within the agility of our bipedal robotic desires. To place it bluntly, robotics corporations aren’t afraid to get bizarre with their newest choices.
Chinese language firm Unitree Robotics launched a brand new video on Monday, accessible on YouTubedisplaying off the brand new G1, which sells for US$16,000. That is simply the newest demonstration of a robotic maneuvering in utterly inhuman methods to realize its targets, as you’ll be able to see within the GIF picture above.
The video comprises quite a lot of unusual actions, displaying how the robotic can rise from the bottom or greet folks by pulling one thing like Exorcist transfer your physique, rotating 180 levels. And it is all strikingly just like Boston Dynamics’ new model of Atlas, which has a brand new manner I am attending to my ft.
There’s additionally an illustration of the Unitree robotic being kicked and pushed, presumably to point out how nicely it could possibly stability even when it encounters resistance. However we might be mendacity if we stated it did not make us uncomfortable. In any case, these are robots that appear like folks. And watching mindless cruelty, even towards a machine that has no emotions, triggers one thing in our mind that claims they should not try this.
Once more, all these distortions appear somewhat new. Ten years in the past Gizmodo visited DARPA Robotics Problem in Southern California, the place groups largely competed to make their robots as human-like as potential. Corporations like Boston Dynamics launch new movies yearly displaying their robots strolling, operating, after which ultimately doing backflips, all in the identical manner proficient people would do them.
Nevertheless it appears to be like like we’re on the cusp of a brand new period on the subject of robotics. Most robotic producers have achieved a primary degree of human-style strolling and operating. The New Frontier takes this way issue and turns them into superhumans, performing gymnastics or making use of logic and motive to the world in entrance of them.
We’re nonetheless a good distance from AGI serving to robots do home tasks, but when we proceed down this path, it is unlikely that robots will do on a regular basis duties that people do not wish to do. We let the AI skip all of the boring stuff and go straight to creating music and writing poetry. It appears foolish to assume that we’re creating a military of butlers to serve humanity with this expertise. No, we’ll in all probability let robots paint lovely landscapes whereas we’re all caught at our desks filling out Excel spreadsheets, if the current previous is any information.