China just dropped a bombshell in robotics humanoid robots dancing at the Spring Festival Gala perfectly in sync with human performers meanwhile figure AI just walked away from open AI to build its own in-house AI Tesla's Optimus is facing a new Challenger in the robot hand game and Nvidia is training humanoids to move like pro athletes the race for the most advanced AI powered humanoid is heating up fast and things are getting intense let's break it all down first up let's chat about China's Spring Festival gala where a group of 16 humanoid robots from a company
called unry took the stage they performed this traditional yangong Co dance alongside 16 human dancers tossing and catching handkerchiefs spinning around in sink and not missing a beat the crazy part is that most humanoid robots out there struggle to stay balanced if you just give them a little shove but these H hun Rob Bots they were not only dancing but also flipping handkerchiefs in the air and catching them again all while maintaining stability that is no small feat now people are comparing them to Tesla's Optimus robot if you remember Optimus had some pretty shaky demos
when it came to walking in a straight line or picking things up the uni tree H hand stands about 1.8 m tall around 51 and weighs 47 kg that's about 104 lb they spent three months training with AI using laser slam for positioning this helped them handle stage nuances like little gaps in the floor and the rapid changing of dance formations these robots were officially rolled out in August 2023 even making an appearance at nvidia's GTC conference in 2024 each H1 robot sells for roughly 650,000 Yuan that's about $90,000 folks have been pointing out how
China is stepping up big time in Ai and Robotics especially after that AI assistant deep seek also made headlines India for instance is keeping a close watch on deep seeks activities worried about data security and Elon Musk he gave his own not so flattering opinion on deep seek implying he wasn't super impressed but here's the kicker while the spotlight is on China's new Ai and Robotics achievements other companies around the globe are making big moves too like figure AI they're the team building that commercial and residential humanoid robot called figure2 they raised around $675 Million
last year boosting their valuation to $2.6 billion and so far they've raised a total of 1.5 billion the big shock is that figure just announced on X formerly Twitter that they're ditching their deal with open AI originally open AI was a key investor and they had plans to develop NextGen AI for figure humanoids but now Brett Adcock the founder and CEO says that they made a major breakthrough and want to switch to building their own in-house AI according to him you can't just Outsource the type of embodied AI you need to run a robot in
Real Time that's part of the reason they're going all in on an endtoend system interestingly open AI is also backing another humanoid robot startup in Norway called 1X and on top of that open aai just filed a new trademark application that references humanoid robots that can learn communicate and even entertain people so it looks like they're not giving up on robotic Hardware projects themselves meanwhile figures new approach might be focusing on Factory uses first BMW for instance began trying out figure robots in a South Carolina Factory which is a pretty big test site if successful
that could be huge for large-scale industrial deployment Brett is also hinting at unveiling something no one has ever seen on a humanoid in the next 30 days so yeah definitely a lot of hype going on there now in other robot news Elon Musk jumped on X to talk about how intricate Tesla's Optimus hand is calling it more complex than a Fab egg that's when clone robotics chimed in claiming that their own humanoid hand is actually lighter since they use artificial muscles instead of metal motors stronger and cheaper to produce they even joke that it's soft
enough to give comfy massages and hugs so there's definitely a rivalry brewing in terms of who can build the best robot hand clone basically said their muscle-based approach beats Tesla's motor-based design any day fewer Parts less weight more strength it's a bold statement but we'll have to see how that plays out in real world testing meanwhile there's yet another big development in humanoid robotics this time from Nvidia and Carnegie melon University they're working on on a new training framework called ASAP which stands for aligning simulation and realworld physics for learning agile humanoid whole body skills
the researchers basically want humanoid robots to mimic top athletes so they fed their system videos of big sport stars like Cristiano Ronaldo LeBron James doing his silencer celebration and Kobe Bryant's legendary fadeaway shot they even taught the bot some dance moves inspired by K-pop Star Rose a tool called tram converted these normal videos into three-dimensional motion data after that the robots learned in simulation first through something called reinforcement learning and then the team refine them to handle real life physics one interesting challenge is the so-called Real 2 Sim 2 real Gap robots can do well
in a computer Sim but when you throw them into the physical world factors like motor heat and mechanical iCal stress can cause them to fail so the ASP framework involves the robots practicing in a simulator collecting data from Real World attempts even if those attempts are messy and then adjusting the simulation to match what actually happened they use something called a Delta action model which basically patches up the differences between the simulator's physics engine and the real world that way the next time the robot tries that jump shot or that dance spin the simulation is
more accurate and the robot moves become smoother and more lifelike the big takeaway is that robots could be a lot more agile and expressive if we can handle all the physics quirks that show up when metal or muscle-based actuators if you're clone robotics meets real world friction gravity and torque limitations the study also pointed out that these Advanced movements can be brutal on Hardware overheating Motors and stressed out metal or plastic pieces lead to frequent breakdowns 2G line robots were damaged during the tests the researchers also said that future approaches might integrate damage aares policies
that adjust on the fly to keep the robot from blowing a motor it's also worth noting how much time and money can go into making these humanoids truly humanlike uni trees H1 is priced around $90,000 while figure is sinking billions of dollars into their broad Vision elon's Tesla is doing the same funneling loads of resources to develop Optimus some companies are focusing on Commercial tasks first like factory work or warehouse jobs because businesses have a higher willingness and budget to pay for these futuristic helpers others like 1X are already pushing toward making robots useful in
the home which is a whole other challenge because you're dealing with everyday random tasks kids running around or pets underfoot so basically China is pushing Ai and Robotics hard unitri dancing humanoids are wowing everyone and shorter training times mean these robots are improving fast meanwhile figure AI split from open AI so they can control every aspect of their humanoids hardware and software we've also got that friendly rivalry over robot hands musk's motor-based design vs clone robotics muscle powerered approach on top of that Nvidia and CMU are teaching humanoids to move like pro-athletes using their ASAP
framework which Bridges simulation and real world practice all this competition is great for speeding up advances in humanoid AI whether it's perfecting robot hands or doing back flips while carrying fragile items we'll see more big reveals soon figure secret project Tesla's next Optimus update or whatever Nvidia and CMU come up with next that's your quick Roundup of all things Ai and Robotics let me know what you think did figure make the right move ditching open AI do you trust muscle-based actuators more than Motors stick around for more updates all
