alt.hn

2/18/2026 at 10:47:44 PM

Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUmlv814aJo

by lisper

2/19/2026 at 8:22:45 AM

To best understand the speed of progress right now, take a look at the show from last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIq_AM4q534

by kasperni

2/19/2026 at 9:02:35 AM

It looks like the difference between the Boston Dynamics robots 2016 vs 2021

The Spot dog (which inspired the Black Mirror "Metalhead" episode) in 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7IEVTDjng

Atlas doing backflips in 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FByY3tSx2Ak

So 5 years of progress within a year.

by dachris

2/19/2026 at 9:18:03 AM

spot dog is hydraulically powered junk, unitree is motor driven from day one. Boston Dynamics was forced to switch to a motor driven architecture after it is proven by unitree.

Boston Dynamics is the follower here.

by tw1984

2/19/2026 at 9:55:42 AM

I look after one at a University that gets used for teaching & outreach & there's definitely no hydraulics on the thing.

by Pixelbrick

2/19/2026 at 11:38:46 AM

They moved to motors from their older high speed hydraulics. I don't know if it was after unitree or not.

by cma

2/19/2026 at 9:50:08 AM

why is hydraulics junk?

by faeyanpiraat

2/19/2026 at 10:07:44 AM

Perhaps because of the potentially slower actuation speed, but you also generally get a lot more power from hydraulics so im not sure one can claim it is junk. Far less acrobatic, but also far more sumo wrestler.

by AngryData

2/19/2026 at 7:47:02 PM

Less fit for impressive youtube videos. I'm sure they have other boring utilities for the technology.

by tencentshill

2/19/2026 at 7:50:44 AM

Some people on X are saying they're "just" cloning/copying "puppet" human movements.

I know very little about robotics, but given these appear totally free-standing, if that was the case (I personally don't think it is), wouldn't that imply they have the same centre of gravity and weight of limbs as humans? Surely they'd have to be able to balance themselves, and copying a human's movements "exactly" wouldn't work for their own motion otherwise?

I think when watching I saw one or two of the robots "judder" their feet a bit out of sync with others - this seems to imply they are capable of balancing their own motion a bit individually.

by pixelesque

2/19/2026 at 9:12:37 AM

I've worked on much less expensive, much smaller humanoid robots.

These robots are certainly running through a scripted set of poses which has been extensively tested for the conditions (Humans would also be choreographed and have to hit certain marks at certain times). If you covered the stage in loose gravel or a thick carpet they'd all start falling over. The things the robots hold are almost certainly taped into their hands.

Despite that, this is a very impressive demo. Those robots are $40k+, they've got 20+ of them. And not a single one fell over. They're fast too - and there are a load of corners they could have cut, but they didn't.

The floor has two textures, it would have been easier without that. The humans right alongside them? Much less safety paperwork without them. The robot wearing trousers and a cape? Much easier without that. The fewer robots you have, the lower the chances on falls over landing their backflip. Lose the audience and record it in multiple takes. Hell, you could have human acrobats in robot costumes and it'd cost far less and be much easier.

So this demo is very much a costly signal of confidence.

by michaelt

2/19/2026 at 9:28:14 AM

> The things the robots hold are almost certainly taped into their hands.

You can clearly see that the robots change their grip of their sword, so it cannot be taped to their hands.

by flakeoil

2/19/2026 at 11:48:22 AM

When is that?

With the poles at the 1 minute mark, the robots enter holding them and their left hand never moves on the pole. Also note the stationary hand is matte grey while the moving hand is metallic silver.

Likewise with the wine gourds (?) at 2m30s and the nunchucks at 3m40s.

It’s a completely sensible design decision, much simpler to do cartwheels and vaults if you don’t have super delicate fingers fitted.

by michaelt

2/19/2026 at 9:44:10 AM

Probably a compliant magnetic coupling, as even simple force-sensing mechanical hands cost too much to practice back-flips. =3

by Joel_Mckay

2/19/2026 at 12:31:04 PM

Why do you think it would be the case about e.g. swapping to thick carpet would throw things off? Intuitively it seems like they must have a tremendous amount of dynamic adjustment going on. For instance think of how much variance, driven by dynamics, that there's going to be in the scene at 2:48 [1] where the robot [intentionally] falls over and then aerobically picks itself back up.

The motion is certainly scripted, but the exact mechanics in play there almost certainly vary radically from take to take. Imagine something simple like a pool/billiards break. Even if you set up a machine to rack the balls and break them in as close to identical as possible, you'd get wildly different results each time. And the dynamics in this motion is going to dwarf that.

[1] - https://youtu.be/mUmlv814aJo?t=168

by somenameforme

2/19/2026 at 2:04:48 PM

To be more precise: I think they have a fixed repertoire of moves that they can blend together and slightly tweak on the fly, but only within certain limits.

This would also be normal for human performers - touring ballet companies travel with their own flooring the dancers are used to pirouetting on.

At the 40 second mark every robot does a backflip then when landing hops their supporting leg while pointing the toe of their working leg. Which works fine and looks great! But they arrive in that pose with a certain amount of momentum and needing a certain amount of grip on the floor.

So this is a rehearsed, tested performance - not proof we’ll have firefighter robots doing parkour through burning buildings any time soon!

by michaelt

2/19/2026 at 6:07:59 PM

> To be more precise: I think they have a fixed repertoire of moves that they can blend together and slightly tweak on the fly, but only within certain limits.

Human acrobats do the same, they know a few fixed tricks and practice them often in order to stay in shape. The point here is to compare the dynamic abilities of bots vs those of humans, not vs some pink unicorns - the latter comparison isn't informative because there aren't any jobs for pink unicorns just yet.

> So this is a rehearsed, tested performance - not proof we’ll have firefighter robots doing parkour through burning buildings any time soon!

A bot assisted by humans can do better than them in a burning building, the lack of need for heavy SCBAs would allow the bot to perform acrobatics scripted by a human at the time of action.

by bigbadfeline

2/19/2026 at 2:41:06 PM

> not proof we’ll have firefighter robots doing parkour through burning buildings any time soon!

I wonder how similar friction is across varieties of standard issue corporate carpet...

by ethbr1

2/19/2026 at 9:38:26 AM

Smaller platforms are actually harder to build: minimal power budget, weaker drive systems, less sensors, and fewer processing options.

Not a fan of bipedal platforms or 50kg of servos for a number of reasons.

Best regards. =3

by Joel_Mckay

2/19/2026 at 11:03:09 AM

Yes and no.

An Aldebaran Nao can fall over with no damage because it’s only 5kg and 58cm. And you can use relatively low power motors, so nobody can lose a finger to crushing in the joints.

But you miss out on the benefits of being able to operate in a human centric world - you’ll never get a Nao to climb stairs, open a door, or carry a cup of coffee.

by michaelt

2/19/2026 at 9:26:10 AM

> They're fast too

That was of of the two things that impressed me most, along with the choreography involving close and direct contact

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 4:23:09 PM

They do use keyframes most likely captured from a human controller. you can see this after they do the backflip at :29s they land a bit differently and recover in slightly different ways but all end up in a static pose for a moment before moving on to next movement. The advancement here is the dynamics to go between those frames. Looking at last years performance you can see they pretty much go from frame a to b then stabilize then to c then stabilize. This is what makes this years look much more lifelike there seems to be some active stabilization going on during the movements. It also seems to let them chain movements that can take advantage of momentum much better rather than needing to be at rest between frames.

by clifdweller

2/19/2026 at 7:59:34 AM

It’s not a 1:1 human motion capture to servo translation. There is some work done to fix Center of gravity like you said and issues with friction and momentum.

The hard part with “autonomy” is interpretation of the environment and feeding that back into some control loop to accomplish a goal in real time. That is why most of these demos are basically recordings of movements, like choreography.

by wasmainiac

2/19/2026 at 8:24:59 AM

They're also interacting with the environment (vaulting boxes / walls), which implies they either know their 3D position very accurately, or they have some form of sensors and can adapt a bit.

by pixelesque

2/19/2026 at 3:09:11 PM

That’s fine, static objects can be integrated in to sequences if each unit has enough positional accuracy.

My point is that if you interrupt the sequence by pushing it over or standing in front of it, the unit will not be able to recover or mitigate the issue. I’m not sure about the models in the video but they should enter a safe state, hopefully gracefully.

by wasmainiac

2/19/2026 at 8:53:42 AM

As someone who owns a pair of Unitree G2s this blew my mind

by simonjgreen

2/19/2026 at 9:54:38 AM

what are you using those for ?

by faeyanpiraat

2/19/2026 at 8:29:48 AM

The impressive part here isn't the movement itself. You can easily train a model to perform a "procedural animation" that includes a full body control policy. The hard part is making it reliable enough to perform long sequences of movements and adapting to differences in robot placement. In other words, performing a flawless stage play is the hardest part.

by imtringued

2/19/2026 at 10:12:10 AM

I'm afraid you might not understand what you're talking about. Animation is a geometry problem, while robotics is a dynamics problem. The latter is subject to constraints many times greater than the former. There is no such "easy" model as you imagined that can transform the former into the latter.

by tianqi

2/19/2026 at 8:36:38 AM

Of course the robots have been pre-trained and the movements are scripted, and nobody is claiming otherwise. But there must be a lot of autonomous balancing taking place. At one point you can see the robots adjusting their feet slightly different although they are all in sync, and that catapult does not look like its movement is exactly the same every time. It is just super impressive.

Does anyone remember when Honda's Asimo robot clumsily fell down the stairs during a demonstration[1] and we thought we were safe from a robot invasion by just moving to the upper floor? That was about 20 years ago.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mx6paHrnIE

by jansan

2/19/2026 at 9:04:31 AM

> balancing their own motion a bit individually.

check this 4 months old video below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPSLMX_V38E

I'd willing to bet that it is already close to impossible to get the robot lose its balance without some significant external forces.

by tw1984

2/19/2026 at 7:57:24 AM

Those are the same people that say that China is 30 years behind in chip manufacturing.

by holoduke

2/19/2026 at 9:07:21 AM

I don't know if you're aware but robots and chips are different things that require different expertise.

by suddenlybananas

2/19/2026 at 9:26:56 AM

It's still a completely farcical attitude. At this point it's just a matter of how many years it'll take for chinese manufacturing to outstrip western expertise with chips, too. Ten years? Five? Two?

Very exciting times to live through.

by throwaway24778

2/19/2026 at 8:26:14 AM

Yes, the autonomy level of these robots was what I was yesterday emailing with my former colleagues we were wondering. Two months ago CNET & PC-Mag posted following video which suggests more about robots movements being assisted by humans. And it also shows Chinese have being edge of the development at that point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXTibM33SDg

However, then another short video bit alike popped up and is puzzling too.

Apparently Unitree robot is playing pingpong match like a pro. Sorry about german announcer, I couldn't find with english.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BgD1ukTyNnw

There is another match viewable by pressing that "Robot plays ping ppng #robot" arrow.

How about that robot? Is it human assisted or not? Our opinions diverted, I'm quite sure it is assisted but my former colleague thinks it's got to be autonomous as it would be too difficult and slow to do that fast movements with remote control assisted robot.

It would be nice to hear opinions about that playing robot too if anyone could provide some insight in that.

edit: I think the serve waiting robot hand movement and after losing wiping left eye gesture as a disappointing a bit in my opinion gives up it's human. Or if not, why would a robot do such a human like gestures.

edit2: OK, good points, I see now. It's definitely a fake. Thanks to all who replied :)

by mesrik

2/19/2026 at 8:34:48 AM

that ping pong video is a CG robot, whether realtime superimposed or otherwise who knows. Look at the :27 when it gets out of tracking breaking all of physics, feet aren't planted to the ground, light, shadows.. etc.

by Keyframe

2/19/2026 at 8:33:37 AM

I think the ping pong match video might be misleading you. Based on the visual artifacts around the robot, the original footage likely had a human player that was swapped in with a robot in this video. It also has an altered content warning.

by sheept

2/19/2026 at 8:33:21 AM

The ping pong video you linked is clearly fake. Look at the paddle... anyways...

by tudelo

2/19/2026 at 9:01:47 AM

I can think that future use of pingpot robot is to replicate specific pro player style (from various recording) and be used to spar by pro players before their specific matches.

by eunos

2/19/2026 at 8:42:57 AM

The pingpong video is very obviously computer generated. The robot feet give it away immediately

by otikik

2/19/2026 at 9:20:37 AM

Watch out, the two shorts you linked (both of robots playing ping-pong) are fake.

by reeeeee

2/19/2026 at 8:37:45 AM

The second video you've linked is fake in every aspect in regards to the robot.

The robot is floating above the ground.

The paddle is phasing in and out of existence.

The robot has a realistic human hand and uses it to hit the ball.

The robot randomly turns around mid-air near the end of the video.

The robot looks nothing like a Unitree robot.

Oh, how could I forget, the entire robot looks so obviously fake even when disregarding all of the above that I can't believe you're even trying to analyze anything in that video.

by imtringued

2/19/2026 at 8:33:40 AM

I'm 99% sure that ping pong match is CGI. The whole robot has this green screen effect. Look at its feet. And at second 17 it just disappears entirely for a few frames.

by Bewelge

2/19/2026 at 4:44:31 AM

Just submitted this as well. This is remarkable. Boston Dynamics has some catchup to do.

by somenameforme

2/19/2026 at 7:32:40 AM

To be fair to BD, Atlas can lift 50 kg and a Unitree G1 can lift about 2 kg. An Atlas could literally pick up and throw a G1.

They are very different robots with very different goals, so it should be no surprise that the G1 appears much more agile.

by elil17

2/19/2026 at 8:54:09 AM

Isn’t it easier to make an agile robot big than to make a big robot agile?

by dash2

2/19/2026 at 9:35:27 AM

One big issue is the "joints". It's always a trade-off between mass, strength, speed, precision, and dexterity. State of the art is matching or exceeding organic joints on 2-3 axis, while being an order of magnitude below human/animal performance on the two other axis.

Human individual fingers can withstand internal loads of hundreds of newtons, (possibly a thousand for brief periods if you're a star rock-climber), while at the same being capable of tasks such as writing, which require high speeds and (sub-)millimeter precision, while also enjoying 4 degrees of freedom (5 for the thumb), and they're stuffed full of sensory organs to boot. Oh and they're also self-healing, so taking some damage during use is no problem and they will actually adapt to the task they're used for over time. Everything we can make compared to this is laughably primitive.

If you make an agile robot big, it now weighs more, which means its joints now need to handle greater loads, which makes it necessary to make them much bulkier and heavier.

A lot of this is just inherent limitations of electric motors and having to convert rotational energy. This gets heavy fast.

Decent synthetic electrically-driven muscle fibers would go a long way.

by chmod775

2/19/2026 at 8:49:23 AM

Yeah, when the G1s dance with kids, I realized how small they actually were. Definitely not the same category.

by d--b

2/19/2026 at 7:52:18 AM

The H2 is what everyone is talking about now

some specs here: https://www.unitree.com/H2

claimed 3h battery life, can hold about 10% of its weight (7kg, with arms)

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 8:44:52 AM

So Atlas can lift 7x the capacity. Even Digit, the tote-consolidating robot, can do 35lbs.

Unitree's demos are a lot of fun, and the antics of releasing the G1 to the public has certainly captured people's attention, but a "working" robot won't look, act, or develop from the G1 or even H2.

by alex43578

2/19/2026 at 9:13:14 AM

Unitree has plenty other industrial robots. https://www.unitree.com/ -> Click Robots

by kasperni

2/19/2026 at 10:08:46 AM

I wasn't trying to say that Unitree is somehow deficient. I'm sure they could build Atlas if they wanted.

My point was that BD could probably build a robot with the shown acrobatic capabilities, but they choose not to because their goal is to build robots that carry heavy loads for industrial applications.

by elil17

2/19/2026 at 8:28:38 PM

They also wouldn't be getting any funding for doing such fun demos, even if they wanted to.

by skeledrew

2/19/2026 at 9:20:53 AM

I don't need a robot to lift more than 15lbs in order to do all my maid work

Focussing on load capacity is missing the forest for the trees

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 10:10:44 AM

The point is that a robot with higher load capacity is necessarily less agile. BD's target market is industrial so their robots are necessarily larger and less agile.

The fact that Unitree's robots appear so acrobatic reflects that they are likely on par with BD in terms of capabilities but have a different target market.

by elil17

2/19/2026 at 11:14:54 AM

i'd say atlas is roughly on par capability-wise. see their recent video: [1]. but boston has different priorities.

[1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UNorxwlZlFk

by nialv7

2/19/2026 at 8:00:06 AM

Boston dynamics is far behind plus the robots are so cheap , even their dog is cheaper than BD. I dont think their humanoid can even catch up to this price. I am sure US Army and for the chinese counterpart Chinese army will be their biggest customers. But i wonder how will this workout in situations like Plane hijack, fire fighting and other such places where human lives cant be risked to save more human lives. (Please Dont downvote because your american patriotism is poked try replying.)

by pankajdoharey

2/19/2026 at 9:30:03 AM

commenting on downvoting is against HN rules and typically comes with a compounding effect

I personally agree with the rest, recommend you remove that last bit about downvoting and sneering if you can still edit

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 9:16:59 AM

I was born in 1989. The most impressive sudden technological advance I have experienced have been LLMs. This video is a good candidate for second place. I am mindblown... That they even dare having children dance with them. The trust they must place. An acquantance bought a chess board with a robot arm, and it accidentally broke his finger because he picked up a piece that the robot arm wanted to pick up. China isn't just a few hours in the future, more like decades it feels like.

by kaon_2

2/19/2026 at 8:00:01 PM

You were born in 1989 and don't consider the internet the most impressive sudden technological advantage you have lived through? Wireless communication? Jesus.

by thefz

2/19/2026 at 8:06:56 PM

Someone born in 89, in many countries, would've grown up with the internet and non-smart cell phones, at least, no?

They'd only have been 10 in 1999 when cell phones were pretty ubiquitous among adults. I'd say they were basically past it already.

I was born ten years earlier and I'd agree that the internet is likely the biggest change in my lifespan, but I'm not sure I'd say it was as sudden as the past 2 years of AI.

by rkomorn

2/19/2026 at 9:03:44 AM

This is AMAZING.

We are definitely on an exponential in term of capabilities of humanoid robots. We are probably only years away from having a robot in the house, in construction of robots. Automating anything that a human can do is best done in a human sized robot.

But.

None of these are actually useful right now. I don't want something with the arm strength of a forklift taking care of my parents or kids. The demand for humanoid robots right now is like lift a fridge from a delivery truck to a house (aka more mobile forklift) or walk through toxic sewage to pull crates out. Super useful but basically just mobile cranes, which is a small market. China seems to be making the mistake of pushing a tech demo as a consumer product (we've all been on those projects...) which can make people hate the tech.

Build something people want, don't mandate what they want. We're like 3-4 generations from amazing, useful robots. I'll be scared when these things are minding a bunch of dogs on stage.

by k_kelly

2/19/2026 at 9:58:20 AM

>> None of these are actually useful right now.

They could be really useful: without hesitation such humanoid could bring pack of explosives to the opposed treeline.

by ponector

2/19/2026 at 11:55:33 AM

I hate you. This will be real in <5 years.

Also, current tech could be useful as a shopping assistant, to carry the groceries for people who can't, for one reason or another. Though the other post about tipping safety does have a point.

by rubzah

2/19/2026 at 9:14:10 AM

> I don't want something with the arm strength of a forklift taking care of my parents or kids.

A risk I never hear discussed is falling over and injuring children. Even the petite Unitree models are like a 70kg piece of furniture. Each year thousands get injured because of furniture falling over. I'd buy one immediately, but if I had kids or pets, I would wait for safety data on falls.

by energy123

2/19/2026 at 9:59:34 AM

Humans have a similar weight and can also fall, so would you be satisfied with a fall rate the same or better than an average human?

by jbstack

2/19/2026 at 1:07:20 PM

People here on HN rave about FSD taxis... And we know that cars are potential death machines.

Anyways these robots are cool and I hope we send robots to Mars instead of human astronauts.

by expedition32

2/19/2026 at 11:57:53 AM

> I don't want something with the arm strength of a forklift taking care of my parents or kids.

Robots in such an environment are designed with the appropriate affordances so that they cannot use too much force... but the concern about weight I suppose is quite salient.

by jhanschoo

2/19/2026 at 9:13:59 AM

Last time I had to implement a typed programming language, it was for short programs only. So for typing I just converted the program into a large set of constraints and throw z4 at it, asking to optimize for smallest possible types. If z4 could find types for every expressions in less than a few seconds then it was well typed.

You had to use a few trick for larger programs, but basically it managed to type any real programs and I never encountered an ambihuous case that caused a problem in practice. In case of failure, the small set of unsatisfiable constraints was easy to translate into nice error messages. This also allows for typing rules that are easy to state and can accomodate operators that adapts nicely to their environment.

I would understand if this approach would be frowned upon, but I still wonder if any serious language ever used this approach?

by rixed

2/19/2026 at 9:18:56 AM

damn, now I would like to know what you were really answering to.

by RobertoG

2/19/2026 at 9:30:36 AM

probably under a wrong thread, but can you point me to the one you intended? Really curious about that

by gravifer

2/19/2026 at 11:56:21 AM

Haha, I've often wondered how one could answer to the wrong thread on HN, and there I am :)

Was intended for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47025885

And z4 is, of course z3 (no I don't have special access to next-gen version of z3)

by rixed

2/19/2026 at 8:19:31 AM

What really stood out was that when they portrayed different important jobs it was all done by men and women were in the background as decoration/onlookers in awe. Very strange development.

by thenthenthen

2/19/2026 at 10:57:07 AM

I would love this if it wasn’t clear that due to the configuration of our economic system this technology will be used against humanity and in favor of the demons who rule the planet.

by Gud

2/19/2026 at 8:46:03 AM

I guess the US's answer is going to be gas-powered robots ;-).

by ciconia

2/19/2026 at 8:59:37 AM

Coal-powered steampunk robots would be awesome :D

by wazoox

2/19/2026 at 8:27:15 AM

I assume this is highly staged as a set routine?

No less impressive, but is it likely each robot autonomously learned a routine? Or just got programmed for a very exact act?

by slimebot80

2/19/2026 at 8:30:57 AM

I'm not so sure what this question means... are you asking if China has AGI right now? I'm quite sure all similar performances done by humans are all staged.

by raincole

2/19/2026 at 10:01:55 AM

Where human performances are staged, the human still needs be capable of learning the choreography. There's a difference between a robot learning the routine vs having it hardwired.

by jbstack

2/19/2026 at 8:37:17 AM

Perhaps improv theater is the better test for AGI

by patapong

2/19/2026 at 8:41:50 AM

LLMs are already way too prepared for "Yes and..." improv, given GPT's ridiculous need to click-bait the end of every conversation.

by alex43578

2/19/2026 at 8:39:13 AM

Based on where other companies are right now, it's probably a pre programmed routine, but the robots autonomously balance themselves. Anything beyond that would be quite a large leap, and I think Unitree would've gloated about it way more outside of the gala. The robots' speed and consistency are still impressive, though.

by sheept

2/19/2026 at 10:07:27 AM

The learning here is about what servor motors to control how much. But the performance was 100% staged and preprogrammed. Still impressive.

by lukan

2/19/2026 at 9:07:03 AM

Any information what battery life these things have? Would a human be able to outrun them given the need?

by merpkz

2/19/2026 at 9:32:05 AM

3 hours according to the website, and the battery looks to be quick swappable

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 9:51:34 AM

Can it swap its own battery?

by pan69

2/19/2026 at 10:03:03 AM

No, it cannot. That's why the right design for robots is for it to have two, so it doesn't have to do the Bemo fall.

by fragmede

2/19/2026 at 10:06:06 AM

but can you play games on its face like Bemo, Cozmo, and Vector?

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 10:04:54 AM

I doubt so, but another one could in theory

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 8:39:36 AM

It is time to rewatch Terminator 2.

by eisfresser

2/19/2026 at 8:43:34 AM

What is the most impressive is the robustness. Of course they are following a captured human routine, but they are facing so many disturbances from which they need to recover and keep following the desired trajectories, while under multiple constraints (movement ranges, not losing balance, etc).

You can see on the backflips that all robots landed quite differently, some with both knees on the ground, some with one, some with none. Yet all recovered gracefully and moved on to the next step of the choreography.

It is genuinely impressive, and scary.

Meanwhile in the west we are bickering like 10year olds.

by 4gotunameagain

2/19/2026 at 10:01:53 AM

Oh god the bickering. For self driving cars, lidar vs cameras is totally missing the point. Waymo can drive with cameras only. The AGI question is what decisions does it make when things go wrong.

by fragmede

2/19/2026 at 12:59:34 PM

Boards don't hit back.

by ekjhgkejhgk

2/19/2026 at 1:15:57 PM

One of the latest American coping mechanisms against China is their demographic crisis.

Now the nice thing about demographics is that it's eminently predictable. IMO this is why China is going all in on robotics.

by expedition32

2/19/2026 at 9:42:55 AM

If the human-robot war is waged on a perfectly flat surface, we are fucked!

by dvh

2/19/2026 at 8:49:56 AM

Well, that is obviously another overcapacity issue, this time for robotics. In the last 10 weeks, there were -

Unitree's army of robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4IOJH9Akhg

Robotera sword dancing robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ti9Mi8rbIQ

AGIbot's flying kicks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXnXdh6IEkA

LimX's Tron2 robot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut3QFPr7hyo

one interesting observation is that none of those companies are located in Shenzhen, which arguably has the best supply chain for all electronics stuff. I guess those trillions $ spent on infrastructure paid off - Shenzhen didn't suck all talents into its proximity, it becomes an enabler for industries across the country.

by tw1984

2/19/2026 at 9:04:28 AM

Agibot is not in Shenzhen? I think what happened is that other major cities/provinces like Hangzhou, Suzhou, Shanghai or Hefei started bankrolling talents and enterprises so they too can have major high tech enterprises in their town

by eunos

2/19/2026 at 9:10:03 AM

> Agibot is not in Shenzhen?

AGIBot is the poster boy of the municipal government of Shanghai.

> major cities/provinces like Hangzhou, Suzhou, Shanghai or Hefei started bankrolling talents and enterprises so they too can have major high tech enterprises in their town

State Capitalism at its best.

by tw1984

2/19/2026 at 8:14:12 AM

1) Cool, but when are they actually going to drive my car for me?

2) Any semblance of American technological superiority is pure fantasy at this point. The only area where Americans are truly "advanced" is in selling overpriced SaaS products. There are dozens of Chinese startups with robots just like this—as seen at CES—yet Boston Dynamics is still treated like it’s some untouchable, DARPA-level tech.

3) A lot of this comes down to cost: you can either hire one American fresh grad or a Chinese PhD for the same price.

3) The second reason is cultural: Americans tend to buy solutions, while the Chinese prefer to build them. Even SMEs in China maintain internal dev teams to build custom software for the business, as opposed to paying Salesforce for what is essentially a glorified Excel sheet with sprinkles of automation.

4) America is facing its own innovator's dilemma. The country is currently being run by MBAs and salespeople focused on extracting every last dollar from the consumer instead of providing real value or innovating. Perhaps we're one step beyond the innovators dilemma. The innovators are dead and we are in the corporate greed stage.

5) Americans are completely oblivious to how advanced China has become because of the propaganda they're fed. My personal "aha" moment was when Chinese EVs hit my local market and completely obliterated legacy automakers on both features and price. The American "free" (lol) market is being guarded by politicians but that won't work for long.

by rolymath

2/19/2026 at 8:28:48 AM

#4 is the biggest problem, by an overwhelmingly wide margin. Solve that and everything else fixes itself more or less instantly. Everything is now about money and extracting every single penny possible, instead of about actually achieving things. Even most 'entrepreneurs' are now just starting businesses primarily with the goal of selling them. Everything is broken, because of the pursuit of money became the goal, further compounding by everything being run by people who have no skills except the pursuit of money.

Money should be a means to achieve a thing, not the goal in and of itself. I think the most visible decline came with the increasingly overt goal to charge rent on friggin everything. That's simply not a sustainable or realistic economic model for society and consequently even if it might maximize corporate income in the short to mid-term, in the longterm it's equally catastrophic for them as well.

by somenameforme

2/19/2026 at 9:43:36 AM

The micro-financialization or wallstreet-ification of everything is a succinct way I try to describe it to normies

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 8:18:21 AM

It’s clear to me that the smartest thing China ever did was to limit speculation in the markets. So many human capital in America is wasted pumping up valuations instead of actually building stuff

Every Jane Street hire could be building robots, but instead, they’re trading options and crypto and heck, even market making for prediction markets now

by spaceman_2020

2/19/2026 at 9:35:24 AM

The positive aspect is that there is plenty if venture capital for innovators; the negative one is that those innovations are stifled by various extraction techniques that allow VCs and other investors to get a return on investment.

Crypto is a good example of how the equilibria is hard to maintain, and if the last cycle saw many interesting new products come to life, they all got crushed by ruthless profit-taking from early investors and team members.

by Saline9515

2/19/2026 at 1:03:00 PM

Agreed about the venture capital for innovators part, but that has a danger of eventually the tail wagging the dog. Speculative investments enable VCs to fund other speculative investments until the entire chain is only focused on funding speculative products because that's where you get the meatiest exits

Again, see crypto as a prime example - because, at one point, you could command a valuation that was simply not tethered (heh) to reality, you had all these now-dead L1 chains raising $200M+ at $3-5B valuations.

This also leads to a situation where you only end up funding digital plays because the metrics there can be anything. You had these crypto companies raise based on "growth" when that growth was simply coins produced out of thin air and wallets created by the millions with a script.

You can't do that if you're building actual physical products

by spaceman_2020

2/19/2026 at 9:41:56 AM

> the smartest thing China ever did was to limit speculation in the markets. So many human capital in America is wasted pumping up valuations instead of actually building stuff

there was this Chinese company named Baofeng that built a stupid media player by "re-using" open source FFmpeg code, it managed to get itself publicly listed, then had its valuation went up like 50x for doing nothing other being accused for stealing FFmpeg code.

there were lots of discussions at that time how that happened and why the same level of speculation didn't happen on other public tech companies listed on Chinese market, the consensus was pretty sad - tech companies suitable for speculation are listed in the US by default, those listed on Chinese markets are 2nd tier or 3rd tier to start with, they don't offer any meaningful room for speculation.

by tw1984

2/19/2026 at 8:26:53 AM

Unfair reading bordering with propaganda.

On one hand Boston Dynamics showed similar skill robot well before this demo, only without coreography, which is were most of the wow effect comes from here.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UNorxwlZlFk

Heck check were they were 5 years ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw&pp=0gcJCUABo7VqN5t...

Things is american research is financed by outcome potential not for grandstanding, and free standing robot that can only do recorded coreography aren't that useful outside factory floors, and factory floors can use ceiling rails or wheels to better effect.

So yeah video is suler cool, but there isn't much to it beyond that to read in terms of capabilities. You seem just to be projecting what the truth you want to be on top of a funny dance.

by avereveard

2/19/2026 at 8:39:44 AM

China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, more than the rest of the world combined, and has over 2M deployed total. China makes its own robots (57% indigenous) and its rate of robot deployment continues to grow year to year.

Meanwhile, the US installed 34,200, a decrease on the previous year, and virtually all of those were imported.

https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/global-robot-demand-...

by decimalenough

2/19/2026 at 9:08:10 AM

Do these dance?

And what was the % of industrial capacity non automated over this percentage increase, because of course an industrializing country will have more manual processes to automate.

by avereveard

2/19/2026 at 9:51:29 AM

You asserted that American research is "financed by outcome potential not for grandstanding". But China is not just building dancing robots, they're also installing tons of industrial robots whose sole purpose is making money right now.

by decimalenough

2/19/2026 at 10:23:40 AM

What is the automation gap tho

by avereveard

2/19/2026 at 1:34:02 PM

american research is financed by outcome potential not for grandstanding

Ah yes that explains Tesla...

by expedition32

2/19/2026 at 9:08:17 AM

Also hardwares availability. I saw some X threads that mentioned how US/EU robotics labs/companies need week to procure new hardwares, Chinese ones need days at most. Cant iterate quickly with that constraint.

Imagine you need weeks to start a new software module development and to procure cloud instances.

by eunos

2/19/2026 at 9:00:44 AM

I visited China in November, the amount of different brands of electric vehicles is staggering. And even small hotels had robots delivering packages or food to the rooms.

What impressed me the most is the amount of EVs on the streets.

by ErneX

2/19/2026 at 8:21:00 AM

As European faced with similar pain points, I would assert it was having those MBAs offshoring everything with a colonial attittude, as if the nations on the received end would only take orders from their masters and not learn to master the technology themselves.

After a while, naturally the locals would buy the white label products that are anyway the same as the branded ones, many times produced on the same factory lines.

My father used to say, every company goes downhill when management takes over, meaning those straight out management schools without any actual business experience on what the company does, and he was kind of right, that is how we hand landed in late stage capitalism and entshitification, in the middle of geopolitics turn over.

These robots might not drive the car for us, but certainly will become part of some police containment unit, regardless if they are remote controlled or AI driven.

by pjmlp

2/19/2026 at 11:18:08 AM

Problem is that China had both cost advantage (both human capital and energy) and a large internal market. If as a company you decided not to invest and build a factory in China, you were quickly losing vs your competitor. The solution to this problem for EU and US however won't be as simple..

Once China built an industrial base, and has cheap energy sources, you cannot directly out compete it. You can only try to maintain your own industrial base by locking competitors out of your market. There is no other way. In the end that's the result of globalization - US&EU companies thought they can produce cheap, sell expensive. Instead they trained their own competition, and due to weak IP laws enabled this exodus of industry know-how to China.

Now, if China was a smaller country - let's say Japan or Turkey - this wouldn't be such a huge problem. But for the global economy, having a single country that produces 80% of all consumer goods is also a huge problem. That was never the case before with the US (except maybe directly after WW2). US+Europe, Japan+Korea, Canada, Australia supply chain was much more diverse and distributed.

What happens now is dangerous because in the end the profits are not spread across the world, and economies of scale cause this monopoly to appear, which will be hard to mitigate.

Can countries "slow" down China and move production to diversified locations? For that to work, coordinated tariffs for advanced goods from China would have to be introduced, and production reallocated to multiple other countries - very difficult to execute..

by martchat

2/19/2026 at 7:50:40 AM

battery life measured in a handful of minutes too :-P

by senectus1

2/19/2026 at 8:02:03 AM

Tbf, if I did whay they do in this video, my battery life would more like a handful of seconds.

by metanonsense

2/19/2026 at 9:45:56 AM

3 hours, so if 180m is a handful, but I don't agree, my micro-drone is a handful at 3-4m of flight

by verdverm

2/19/2026 at 7:42:56 AM

there is reason why in those 5 minutes you see them together in same shot with audience only 2 times and only for few seconds

there is reason why most of the shots are not wide angle showing whole scene, seems they learned their lesson from last year where you could easily see on the edges all the failures

this was heavily edited and repeated, I mean is it really surprising considering all CGI you see during whole gala? I watched whole 5 hours (though skimmed through a lot), they just can't make show same as seen by real people on the site, what you see in TV is very different from what audience has seen

edit: the whole gala show is recording, it would be impossible to organize such event across many cities with so many performances live, olympics opening ceremony is walk in the park compared to this

by Markoff

2/19/2026 at 2:57:35 PM

> there is reason why in those 5 minutes you see them together in same shot with audience only 2 times and only for few seconds

Reason: otherwise, you will be asking what happens when the shot is switched between the stage and the audience.

by seekdeep

2/19/2026 at 7:45:17 AM

>this was heavily edited and repeated

While I don't know whether this was indeed broadcast live, at least this recording is missing a section since as the YT comments point out at 1:25 the staffs appear out of nowhere.

by krackers

2/19/2026 at 8:12:13 AM

Can you elaborate on where? I'm not seeing anything at all at 1:25. This is a timestamp to 1:24: https://youtu.be/mUmlv814aJo?t=84

I was initially somewhat skeptical as well because this looks like a surprisingly massive leap in robotics capability, but haven't been able to find anything particularly sus.

by somenameforme

2/19/2026 at 8:28:15 AM

Start watching at like 1:19 and see the kids don't have their own staff. Then at around 1:24 they do.

by polishdude20

2/19/2026 at 8:48:06 AM

Ahhh! When he said staffs I assumed he meant people, not staves! Yeah, that's 100% CG. Here [1] you can see where the kids take a stance where it was to be edited in, and if you pause at the exact moment - it looks pretty bad, with something like a lightsaber just popping in the kid's hand.

Hmmm. Not sure what to make of this. I wish it was possible to see the raw unedited footage. It makes me question everything else.

[1] - https://youtu.be/mUmlv814aJo?t=82

by somenameforme

2/19/2026 at 8:55:24 AM

If you watch at 0.25 speed, you can see the staff is actually a magician's cane. It's a coiled up bit of plastic that springs open when you release the ends. You can see similar tricks on YouTube, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-j6G4sPwWU

by unsnap_biceps

2/19/2026 at 5:28:42 PM

That's fair, I think the fact that at 1:16 when they land on the floor one hand remains coiled as if holding something in it makes that a likely possibility. Guess I wasn't expecting a magic trick!

by krackers

2/19/2026 at 12:08:09 PM

That definitely does seem viable. I suppose never say 100%...

by somenameforme

2/19/2026 at 12:02:34 PM

That's true, and the wobbliness of the cane is indeed characteristic of this device.

by jhanschoo

2/19/2026 at 8:47:04 AM

Have you seen the full gala? There are many sections where they interlace full intense cgi, it’s kinda like the new apple conference transitions where they purposefully don’t aim for reality, more like an enhanced experience that may or not have a purely live version.

by kace91

2/19/2026 at 8:33:46 AM

Yeah, I noticed the heavy editing of the gala this year too and it was very disappointing. Even in tons of performances / dances where they really shouldn't have needed to there were obvious cinematic shots were not 'live' from the same recording. While for the robots I can imagine the pressure might have lead to editing a few takes, it really took away from the regular dancing performances and made it feel a bit more like watching a heavily edited music video.

by ddxv

2/19/2026 at 8:52:44 AM

Oh no, LinkedIn wall is leaking.

by lifestyleguru

2/19/2026 at 8:16:36 AM

Looks fake.

by andrewstuart