Live data from Hacker News

Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

youtube.com

41–50 of 146 posts

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#41

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 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…

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-...

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps improv theater is the better test for AGI

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

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#43
post #22

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 fo…

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…

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

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#44
post #38

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?

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.

[deleted]

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#45
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.

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#46
post #8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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)

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.

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#48
post #4

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 ga…

[deleted]

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#49
post #5
post #4

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 ga…

>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.

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.

Re: Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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

Post reply on HN