Humanoid robots are doing all sorts of things recently, like playing sport, and being sold for under $6,000 USD. Interesting Engineering spotted the R1, a new human-shaped robot developed by Unitree Robots in Hangzhou, with the surprisingly low price tag of 39,999 yuan. Sometimes the words "you get what you pay for" hit a little more prophetically than others.
The R1 are spry looking bot, boasting 26 joints with a marketing bent on being great for sports and other demanding activities. That's a whole lot of bot for under $6k. The pricing even undercuts Unitrees other models on offer, with its other cheaper units like the G1 coming in at at least 99,000 yuan. Unitree's flagship the H1 is closer to $90,000 USD, so there's no doubt the R1 would have to be a significantly cut down unit to garner that pricetag.
That's kind of the point with the R1. It's positioned as an option for small developers wanting to cut their teeth with a premade bot to work with. It's under 25kg so it's much lighter and theoretically easier to deal with than some heftier bots. The idea is to give teams that couldn't dream of affording something like the H1 the chance to at least play with a programmable metal human, at a much lower cost, at least in money.
Unitree's marketing video shows off some impressive robot action with sweet cartwheels, and some Rocky montage style air punching. These are all actions I'm used to thinking of coming out of a much more expensive bot. Something like a Boston Dynamics dance off. It's in this video that I also started to release the R1 actually looks really familiar.
More than a few videos have gone viral recently showing humanoid robots behaving badly, and it looks like the R1 might just be the star. They include this video where a robot appears to start fronting up to a crowd in China. It's in a uniform, so it's a little tricky to tell but this robot shares the same general shape as the R1, and the window in the helmet looks similar too.
Another example is this video of a robot dancing at a convention, then falling and having the most relatable freak out of its life. Unfortunately, once more this robot's drip makes it a little hard to see, but the proportions and joints do seem very R1-esque. And if that's the case, kudos actually, because that dancing was pretty great before the fall.
Both of these robot's actions were put down as likely to be software glitches. Horrifying software glitches.
Of course, these could also be earlier models or a completely different robot entirely. However, when you think of a programmable robot that costs under $6,000 USD, do you picture one that can patrol Pompeii, or one that's likely to glitch out and scar everyone present? For that price, we can only hope those scars are only emotional.
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