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.
Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
131–140 of 146 posts
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#1321) 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 thi…
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 grandst…
american research is financed by outcome potential not for grandstanding
Ah yes that explains Tesla...
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
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!
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
> 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...
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#135there 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 ga…
> 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.
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#137Some 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 fo…
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.
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 els…
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
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!
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
> 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.
Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
why is hydraulics junk?
Less fit for impressive youtube videos. I'm sure they have other boring utilities for the technology.