Before They Can Rule the World, Chinese Robots Need to Master Basic Chores

Hindustan Times

a day ago

BEIJING—Humanlike robots are great for entertainment. Menial labor? Not so much.
At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing this weekend, more than 500 humanoid robots competed in both sporting events and real-world tasks such as moving boxes, delivering luggage and cleaning rooms. Some were remarkably fast and agile, but most were clumsy and inconsistent.
Throwing away nine pieces of trash in a mock hotel room took more than 17 minutes for one robot competitor. In a pharmacy simulation, a robot spent nearly five minutes grabbing three boxes of medicine. In a factory scenario, a robot spent about two minutes placing two containers on designated shelves.
'Everything that is easy for humans is a challenge for robots,' said Diana Kleingarn, a Ph.D. student from Germany who helped train soccer-playing robots.
China has said it wants to be a world leader in humanoid robots by 2027. The Olympic-style event, however, suggested that truly useful humanoids are still years away.
Two robots fight in a free-combat event.
A robot trained by the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence in collaboration with Unitree Robotics, a leading Chinese robot maker, competed in a hotel reception scenario, using a three-fingered hand to drag a suitcase to a designated door. It moved in small, stomping motions, freezing at times.
'Many of our humanoid robot algorithms are still in the lab demo stage,' said Huang Siyuan, an institute researcher.
Another competition simulating a hotel environment involved entering and exiting through a door and navigating through a room containing a bed and furniture to pick up and throw away nine pieces of trash. Some robots finished in under 10 minutes, while others were a lot slower.
A team of students from Renmin University of China entered a two-armed, wheeled robot made by Chinese manufacturer AgileX Robotics into the hotel-cleaning event. It was operated by a human team member using virtual-reality goggles and controllers.
After two months of training, the robot took more than 12 minutes to finish. It tried to throw a plastic bag in the trash bin but missed. Zhao Yihan, a student on the team, said getting the operator's movements to translate to the robot's arms smoothly was a challenge, especially with a spotty signal in the arena.
Humans and robots take part in the opening ceremony of the games.Humanoid robots play keyboards, ahead of the opening ceremony.
Still, China, contending with an aging population and shrinking workforce, hopes humanoid robots can eventually replace humans in some boring or dangerous jobs. Chinese companies have jumped headfirst into developing humanoid technology, encouraged by official subsidies and praise. Some robot makers say they have managed to produce useful machines for commercial settings.
On Friday, a wheeled robot from startup UniX AI completed the room-cleaning task in as little as eight minutes and 21 seconds while operating autonomously, ultimately winning the gold medal for the competition. Company founder Fred Yang said UniX AI has already deployed several hundred robots, priced from around $12,000, many at hotels.
Yang, who interrupted his Ph.D. studies at Yale to start his company in the eastern city of Suzhou last year, said training robots through large AI models—analogous to the large-language models that train AI chatbots—has led to improvements in manipulation and perception. That has allowed robots to operate in generic scenarios, he said.
In a combat match at the robot games, humanoids punched and kicked one another, striking opponents in the gut. At times, the contestants jabbed at the air with their backs to one another.
Nearby, on a small soccer field, robots rhythmically stomped on the field, pushing a ball along and crashing into one another. Occasionally the humanoid athletes would fall or abruptly pass out and their human caretakers dashed over to pull the machines off the field.
Humanoid robots compete in a soccer match at the games.
On the track, robots ran, some quickly, some slowly, as humans controlling the machines jogged nearby. A few humanoids lost their way. After reaching the goal, one stalked toward a group of photographers but got too close, resembling a celebrity upset at paparazzi.
A team that competed with Unitree's H1 robot won a gold medal in the 1,500-meter race at six minutes, 34.4 seconds. That is around three minutes slower than the human world record. Still, its human controllers couldn't keep up, Unitree founder Wang Xingxing said in an interview published by the game organizer.
'For our next competition, we'll definitely choose autonomous mode,' Wang said.
Write to Hannah Miao at [e-mail] and Yoko Kubota at [e-mail]
Before They Can Rule the World, Chinese Robots Need to Master Basic Chores
Before They Can Rule the World, Chinese Robots Need to Master Basic Chores
Before They Can Rule the World, Chinese Robots Need to Master Basic Chores