A video recently published on YouTube left the technology community with a mixture of indignation and amazement. In it, the G1 humanoid robot from Unitree, one of the most audacious Chinese robotics manufacturers, is subjected to what engineers called a “violence test.”
The scene seems straight out of a dystopian movie, the humanoid is kicked repeatedly, staggers, slips and even falls, but gets up in less than a second, defying expectations about the resilience of machines. The G1 is known for its compact and flexible structure, but the video exposed something else, its ability to react to external forces with almost human-like reflexes.
Throughout the video, the robot receives about nine direct kicks coming from different directions, instead of getting stuck or breaking, it maintains the posture, oscillates briefly and regains its balance, only once does it fall to the ground due to a slippery carpet and the immediate recovery ends up becoming the most impressive moment of the demonstration.
The impact was immediate, in the Internet comments they mixed humor and warning, "when the gentlemen of the neighborhood arrive, this will be the first to go to the other neighborhood." One of them ironized; Another wrote, “remember, someday these robots will see these videos too.
Behind the joke, the sensation of being in front of something that touches the imagination is clear, machines that endure attacks and still get up. but there is cutting-edge science behind this show. The G1 is equipped with permanent synchronous motors in its joints, capable of high-speed micro-adjustments. A dual encoder system ensures real-time feedback coordinated by a full-body control structure, meaning all joints work as a dynamic organism and not in isolation.
To “feel” the environment, it has 3D LIDAR, depth cameras and an IMU, an inertial measurement unit, forming an internal model of the surrounding space. This combination is enhanced with Unitree's artificial intelligence, which uses imitation and reinforcement learning. The G1 observes human actions such as martial arts or even dance steps and perfects its own movements.
It is no coincidence that in previous videos it has already been shown kicking, turning and executing maneuvers reminiscent of choreographies, this test of violence follows a tradition in robotics, from Boston Dynamics' classic pushes on its Atlas to Honda's resistance tests with the classic ASIMO, engineers have always subjected their humanoids to adverse situations to test balance and durability, Unitree, however, is going further, it wants to show that its J1, even though it is much cheaper and more accessible than its competitors, can rival in agility and robust.
In the end, the scene that might seem like a simple robot taking a beating is actually a milestone, demonstrating that the boundary between fragile machines and truly resilient companions of the future is rapidly narrowing.
The G1 showed that it can fall, but also that it can get up and perhaps that is exactly what scares and fascinates us the most.
Souce
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