Dancing humanoid robots took centre stage on Monday throughout the annual China Media Group’s Spring Competition Gala, China’s most-watched official tv broadcast. They lunged and backflipped (touchdown on their knees), they spun round and jumped. Not one fell over.
The show was spectacular, however prompted some to marvel: if robots can now dance and carry out martial arts, what else can they do?
Specialists have combined opinions, with some saying the robots had limitations and that the show must be seen via a lens of state propaganda.
Developed by a number of Chinese language robotics corporations, the robots carried out a variety of intricate stunts, together with kung fu, comedy sketches and choreographed dance strikes alongside human performers.
Clips circulating on-line shortly drew comparisons with final 12 months’s lunar new 12 months broadcast, which additionally featured dancing robots however with noticeably less complicated actions.
Kyle Chan, an professional in China’s know-how growth at Brookings Establishment, a coverage organisation in Washington DC, stated Beijing makes use of these public robotic performances to “dazzle home and worldwide audiences with China’s technological prowess”.
“In contrast to AI fashions or industrial tools, humanoid robots are extremely seen examples of China’s technological management that basic audiences can see on their telephones or televisions,” he stated.
Pointing to intensifying competitors within the tech house between China and the US, Chan added: “Whereas China and the US are neck-and-neck on AI, humanoid robots are an space the place China can declare to be forward of the US, significantly by way of scaling up manufacturing.”
Georg Stieler, the top of robotics and automation on the world know-how consulting agency Stieler Expertise and Advertising, additionally emphasised the symbolism of China’s prime time broadcast.
“What distinguishes the gala from comparable occasions elsewhere is the directness of the pipeline from industrial coverage to prime-time spectacle,” Stieler stated in a press release.
Evaluating this 12 months’s performances with final 12 months’s – when viewers noticed “essentially a single choreographic mode” with restricted motions together with strolling, twisting and kicking – Stieler stated one key sign of China’s robotic progress is “the power to run giant numbers of near-identical humanoids in synchronised movement with steady gaits and constant joint behaviour”.
However Stieler additionally famous: “Stage efficiency doesn’t equate to industrial robustness, but.” He stated what the robots did was the results of being educated for a routine “lots of or hundreds of instances – you possibly can not simply inform them to vary route or do one thing fully completely different”.
“These dance motions contain little or no environmental notion and are primarily imitation studying plus a balance-keeping controller. That has little bearing on reliability in unstructured environments, a prerequisite for factory-grade deployment. Additionally the progress in dexterity is just not as quick as in locomotion,” he added.
The disclosing of China’s newest era of robots underscores the nation’s broader technological ambitions.
By the top of 2024, China had registered 451,700 good robotics firms, with a complete capital of 6.44tn yuan (roughly $932.16bn), in keeping with state knowledge. Main authorities tasks comparable to Made in China 2025 and the 14th 5-Yr Plan, have made robotics and AI key Beijing priorities.
Morgan Stanley tasks that China’s humanoid gross sales will greater than double to twenty-eight,000 items in 2026; and Elon Musk has stated he expects his greatest competitor to be Chinese language firms as he pivots Tesla towards a concentrate on embodied AI and its flagship humanoid Optimus. “Folks outdoors China underestimate China, however China is an ass-kicker subsequent degree,” Musk stated final month.
Marina Zhang, a know-how professor on the College of Expertise Sydney, stated that such a visual showcase possible hints at a brand new section in China’s manufacturing masterplan, “the place robotics turns into a linchpin within the shift from low-cost meeting to high-end, good manufacturing”.
With Reuters
