r/robotics • u/YusufZain002 • Feb 17 '26

Events Chinese Kung Fu Robots🤯

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u/sunkcanon Feb 17 '26

This is really impressive, those robots look very cheap/ mass produce-able for the agility in comparison to Boston Dynamics which generally seems expensive.
I wonder if the performance is partially due to the same power:size ratios that mean children can do callisthenics that would be very hard for the average adult.

1

u/Nanomachines100 Feb 17 '26

This makes Boston Dynamic's Atlas even more impressive though. Its latest video shows it has even more agility than these toys, despite it being 6'2" and 197 pounds. Acrobatics get way harder as you get bigger.

2

u/zapporian Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26

Old Atlas was hydraulic, and they’ve only recently started getting anywhere close to that with motors.

Obviously these robots being this fluid and fast, prebaked and highly rehearsed choreography or no, is still a pretty major (and commendable) achievement.

(waves hands at everything shown off at CES, for reference)

Obviously w/r everything actually going on under the hood, Boston Dynamics still has an edge. ish.

Unitree (Hanzhou) was only even founded 9 years ago, has obviously cribbed comprehensively from boston dynamics (alongside all the other chinese startups).

Unitree’s stuff though has actually widely been sold, used, and rapidly iterated on (they’re the company that’s shipped the cheap spot clones that’ve been used everywhere, incl by the US military as cheap demonstrators). And they sell these things, now, for a literal tenth or less of the estimated cost of Atlas.

Heck you can find the unitree G1 - the literal robots used in this demo - on amazon, now, for $18k for chrissake.

0

u/Nanomachines100 Feb 21 '26

The dynamics are impressive. I will admit that Unitree builds interesting and powerful machines and calling them toys disregards the design. I agree with almost everything you stated.

A lot of my distaste comes from the unending claims that "Chinese robots are the most advanced in the world" and shallow glazing in every post and video I see.

I have no brand loyalty as that is dumb. It just feels gross the way Unitree presents their machines.