A video of just 2 minutes was enough to put South Korea in evidence on the robotics stage. Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, KAIST, released images of a humanoid that not only runs at high speed, but also masters iconic dance movements, such as Michael Jackson's Moonwalk and even Pato's curious walk.
The demonstration begins with an impressive sequence, the robot slides backwards smoothly, imitating Michael's legendary dance step, shortly after accelerating its pace, going from a common pace of 0.98 m/s to a race that reaches 3.3 m/s, equivalent to about 12 km/h.
For a humanoid with a height of 1.6 cm and 75 kg, these figures reveal not only strength, but also a refined balance that until now seemed exclusive to human athletes, and the performance does not stop there, in resistance tests, the robot, when pushed suddenly, momentarily loses its balance, but manages to stabilize itself and resume its trajectory without falling.
This type of rapid response is considered essential for urban industrial environments where unpredictability is the norm.
Another striking point is the so-called blind walk, without cameras or vision sensors, the humanoid depends only on internal sensors and an artificial intelligence controller, even so, it crosses obstacles, steps and irregular terrain with a certain naturalness, proving that the coordination acquired in virtual simulations can be successfully transferred to the real world.
And in an almost theatrical exception, the robot deeply bends its knees to reproduce the famous waddle walk, in addition to executing coordinated jumps with rigid legs, something that demonstrates dynamic control and precision of momentum. Rare features even among the most advanced humanoids presented so far.
All this was only possible thanks to a reinforcement learning algorithm trained in virtual environments to reduce the classic barrier between simulation and reality. The result is a guided control already capable of replicating complex, even artistic movements in the physical world.
The project developed by the Hobo laboratory of KAIST will be presented at the Humanoids 2025 conference, one of the most important international stages for advances in robotics; According to the researchers, the next step is to expand the humanoid's abilities to include manipulation tasks while walking, such as carrying objects, pushing carts or tackling stairs.
The border between human movement and robotic movement is becoming increasingly tenuous and if we combine all these advances that have been seen this year, with what we will see in the coming months, it can already be said that the future has arrived.
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