Chinese humanoid takes on the Great Wall in new video

In the past few months we’ve seen humanoid robots do their fair share of impressive things including smashing nuts, shaving a cucumber, folding laundry, and tidying up around the office. Now, thanks to a new video from China-based Robot Era, we can add “conquering a world monument” to this rapidly growing list. But wait. Is that duct tape?

The video, released this week and shown below, showcases XBot-L which, the company claims, is the first humanoid to climb the Great Wall of China. That’s probably a pretty safe boast as most humanoids are still being tested in labs or going to work at factories, not galavanting along tourist trails.

While nowhere near as fast as the H1 humanoid released by fellow Chinese company Unitree, or as bendy and graceful as the new Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics, the XBot-L does demonstrate its ability to move steadily along the famous wall, doing a good job handling the occasionally broken pavement and uneven surfaces. It also shows that it can manage stairs with ease and even busts out a few tai-chi moves when it reaches one of the wall’s guard towers. Robot Era says the XBot-L really shines in its ability to not only handle the unpredictable surfaces atop the Great Wall, but to also navigate the dimly lit guard towers where a lack of light could stymie other bots. It attributes both to its proprietary reinforcement learning (RL) tech.

“Perceptive RL algorithms help to strengthen the robot’s perceptive and decision-making capacity in the face of unfamiliar terrains,” Yue Xi, co-founder of Robot Era, said in a statement. “The robot thus can recognize complex road conditions and adjust its walking stance in a timely manner.”

While the humanoid’s advanced navigational and balancing systems are clearly on display in the video, you can also see some duct tape around its midsection. Perhaps that was meant to simulate the waist bags worn by some of the thousands of tourists that visit the wall every year? Or maybe XBot-L had a few too many Tsingtao beers the night before and stumbled on its way up. We’re not entirely sure, but it’s fun to see that as slick as these rapidly advancing humanoids are, there is still the need to break out the occasional DIY hack to get them out of the lab and into the real world.

Though there’s not a lot here that adds to the wonder of humanoid robotic advancement, we have to hand it to Robot Era – a robotics company incubated by the Institute of Cross-disciplinary Information Sciences of Tsinghua University in Beijing – for coming up with a pretty clever promotional effort. Showing a humanoid taking on one of the most iconic monuments in the world is not only novel, but also helps the world get used to seeing them in a normalizing situation.

Now we just have to wonder if the price of admission to these tourist attractions will be different for humanoids than the rest of us as they start rolling out of the factory and into our everyday lives. Maybe Disney will one day offer a “bring your humanoid to the park for free” day? Or the Eiffel Tower will give them a free pass if they can climb up the outside of the structure instead of using the elevator? Makes you think. Makes. You. Think.

Source: Robot Era