I am now slightly obsessed with Uncle Bot, a Chinese robot in people clothes that's rapidly becoming a social media sensation

Ordinarily, I'm not one to jump on whatever the current social media/viral sensation happens to be this week, but in this case, I'll make an exception. A poster on Chinese social media site Douyin uploaded a video of a humanoid robot running down a hill dressed in what I can only describe as "people clothes", and the sprinting android has since become something of an internet celebrity.

Twitter/X user Dott. Orikon has been particularly busy posting videos of Uncle Bot in various scenarios, from touring an office building to lounging on a concrete pillar next to a temple, before posing and waving with his "fans". Uncle Bot even has a robot dog to take on walks with him, which looks to be the same Unitree Go model I captured performing handstands on the CES 2025 show floor earlier this year.

In fact, Uncle Bot looks to be a Unitree G1, currently available at the low, low starting price of $16,000. It's unknown whether Uncle Bot is a marketing tool for the company itself, or whether someone has simply spent a staggering amount of money on a robot and dressed it in middle-age-appropriate clothing for funsies.

Still, as Uncle Bot shows, the Unitree G1 is capable of some surprisingly realistic humanoid motion. It comes equipped with 3D LIDAR sensors for recognising physical objects around it, an Intel RealSense D435i webcam for vision, a microphone array, and some multi-jointed limbs that enable it to sprint down hills, apparently.

Uncle Bot also has a 5 W speaker mounted somewhere in his frame, although it's unknown if this particular Uncle has ever had anything to say—as like most short-clip viral sensations, the background music is cranked up so hard in the mix, any incidental audio is difficult to discern. Yes, I am starting to find grey hairs in my beard, how did you know?

Uncle Bot appears to have a 2-hour battery life, although like my real-life uncles, I'd imagine the range is somewhat limited by how much running you make him do. Still, he's now regularly being spotted around China going about his daily business, although it seems the pleasures of a game of basketball still elude him.

I've also just realised I've slipped into using human pronouns for a robot in my copy, which probably goes some way to explaining why Uncle Bot has proven so popular. While many of us may be apprehensive about the seemingly inevitable robot worker future, it turns out that dressing one in a snazzy set of clothes and giving it a human-like name is all it takes to make us clasp our hands together in glee.

Still, Uncle Bot looks to be entirely friendly for now, and with a 2-hour maximum range and a somewhat flimsy-looking gait, I don't think we have to worry about this particular machine going full-Terminator any time soon. That being said, if I hear a knock on my front door this evening, you can bet I'll be staring downwards out of my peephole just in case dear Uncle Bot has popped round for a surprise visit.

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