Chinese TV just showed a live demo of how far its humanoid robots have come. Per Futurism, Unitree G1 robots at the state-run China Media Group's Spring Festival Gala not only performed a tightly choreographed martial-arts routine with kids, complete with spears and nunchucks: The humanoids, which the Sun describes as being "terrifyingly nimble," also sprinted up a wall and flipped off it, an eye-catching showcase of balance and agility (see it here, starting at around the 3:15 mark). Al Jazeera notes the two dozen or so robots also pulled off "the world's first continuous freestyle table-vaulting parkour, the first aerial flip, continuous single-leg flips ... and the first 7.5-rotation airflare grand spin."
The spectacle, which CGTN deemed a Super Bowl of sorts for robots, highlights a broader surge in China's robotics industry, one intense enough that regulators are warning about a potential bubble as new firms pile in, per Futurism. Analysts told Reuters that the humanoid form neatly packages China's strengths in artificial intelligence, hardware, and manufacturing—resulting in bots far more polished than last year's stiff, handkerchief-waving versions. The display also underscored a brewing race with Western efforts like Tesla's Optimus, which still leans heavily on remote human control. The Guardian, meanwhile, dives deeper into another big, possibly concerning question: "If robots can now dance and perform martial arts, what else can they do?"
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