Now we’ve got robots that can chase and kick us — is this the robot revolution we signed up for?
A robot can’t hurt a human being, at least according to the late science fiction author Isaac Asimov. It’s a rule the EngineAI T800 robot may have missed, as evidenced by the “fighting robot” violently kicking his company’s CEO in a now-viral video.
It’s apparently the season of running, punching, and kicking down doors on humanoid robots, a time that closely follows the days of a secure embrace from a variety of cloth-covered humanoids.
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This “Behind the Scenes” production (seen above) appeared to show EngineAI developers filming the full capabilities of the human-sized robot.
However, these Chinese robot manufacturers have a habit of going even further (perhaps too far). You may remember Iron, a humanoid robot so realistic that the company felt the need to cut away the synthetic skin to prove there was no one underneath.
EngineAI’s smoking gun, however, was a real… uh… kick-ass.
Phew!
EngineAI outfitted CEO Zhao Tongyang with ample padding, then let the T800 give him a nice hard and, I’d say, terrifying kick in the midsection. Naturally, Tongyang flew away, although he seemed more or less unharmed.
I came across these videos just a few days after seeing new updates to Figure 03 from Figure AI and Tesla Optimus. The two robots can now, if the videos are to be believed, run like humans, and up to 10 km/h.
To put this into perspective, most humans can run at this speed (fortunately, no robot has been seen running at Olympian Usain Bolt’s spectacular 23 mph speed).
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The video comparing figure 03 and Optimu’s approach is particularly instructive because it shows how the two humanoids perform a real race; in short, for a fraction of a second, both feet lift off the ground.
Optimus’ overall jogging style is more natural. I think the training (or animation) was probably based more on real people and less on a programmer guessing what the body should look like during a full jog.
This can’t be good
So, yeah, we have robots chasing us now, so maybe they can give us a good hard kick. Maybe we deserve it. After all, there are countless bot “abuse” videos in which developers attempt to push, knock over, and disrupt bot activities, all in the name of testing.
It’s been hard not to feel sorry for these robots, especially if, as people often do, you anthropomorphize them. They are not human, but the more they look and act like us, the more we attribute human emotions to them.
These videos turn that equation on its head. EngineAI, in particular, seems determined to create a robot that can fight back, even if the goal is not, for now at least, to fight us. In fact, in my opinion, this is largely a publicity stunt to promote the company’s upcoming robotic boxing match on December 24. This match follows a previous series of mecha fights, held in Hangzhou, eastern China’s Zhejiang province.
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These matches were memorable mainly due to the poor quality of the robot battle. Most of the boxing robots were child-sized, and there were a lot of missed swings and falls.
If real, the T800 looks like a much more skilled and dangerous boxer, a sort of poster child for our wildest dystopian robotic fears.
Why roboticists are now coming up with dangerous, running, punching robots instead of what we want – robots that can empty the dishwasher in five minutes – is beyond me.
All these EngineAI T800 videos may turn out to be fakes, but the intentions are real, and that’s the opposite of what we want in our inevitable robotic future.
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