Over the past few months, we’ve seen humanoid robots perform impressive tasks, including cracking nuts, peeling cucumbers, folding laundry, and cleaning offices. Now, thanks to a new video from China-based Robot Era, we can add “conquer the world’s monuments” to this rapidly growing list. But wait. Is that duct tape?
The video, released this week and shown below, shows XBot-L, which the company claims is the first humanoid to climb the Great Wall of China. This is probably a pretty safe boast, since most humanoids are still being tested in labs or working in factories. There is no fancy walking along the tourist trails.
Although it’s not as fast as the H1 humanoid released by fellow Chinese company Unitree, or as flexible and graceful as Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas robot, the XBot-L does a good job of demonstrating its ability to move steadily along the famous wall. Deals with occasional crumbling pavement and uneven surfaces. It also shows that you can easily manage stairs and even bust out a few Tai Chi moves once you reach one of the guard towers on the wall. Robot Era says that the This is both due to our proprietary Reinforcement Learning (RL) technology.
“Perceptual RL algorithms help enhance robots’ perception and decision-making abilities when facing unfamiliar terrain,” Yue Xi, co-founder of Robot Era, said in a statement. “Therefore, the robot can recognize complex road conditions and adjust its walking posture at the right time.”
Meet XBot-L, the first humanoid robot to climb the Great Wall of China
The humanoid’s advanced navigation and balancing systems are clearly visible in the video, but duct tape can also be seen around its midsection. Perhaps it was meant to simulate the fanny packs worn by some of the thousands of tourists who visit the wall each year? Or maybe XBot-L had too much Tsingtao beer the night before and accidentally fell over along the way. We’re not entirely sure, but it’s fun to see that as smoothly as rapidly developing humanoids go, it takes the occasional DIY hack to get them out of the lab and into the real world.
There’s not much here to add to the wonders of humanoid robot advancements, but we have to turn to Robot Era, a robotics company founded by the Institute of Interdisciplinary Information Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing, for the development of a pretty robot. Clever promotional effort. Showing humanoids taking over one of the world’s most iconic monuments is not only novel, but it also helps us get used to seeing them as the world returns to normal.
Now that humanoids are coming out of the factories and starting to appear in our daily lives, we have to wonder whether the price of admission to these tourist attractions will be any different for humanoids than for the rest of us. Maybe Disney will offer a “bring your humanoids to the parks for free” day one day? Or does the Eiffel Tower give you a free ticket if you can go up outside the building instead of taking the elevator? It makes you think. make it you. Think.
Source: Robot Age
