Robotics developer conferences like ROSCon are gaining popularity; Unitree Robotics' robots performed a Yangko dance at the Spring Festival Gala, and Tesla's Optimus Prime robot folding clothes attracted significant attention... all of this suggests that robots are developing at an unprecedented pace. However, a humanoid robot marathon in early April poured cold water on this fervent enthusiasm for robotics.
01. The level of humanoid robots is lower than market expectations.
Recently, the Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon kicked off at the South Gate of Nanhaizi Park. This is the world's first humanoid robot half marathon, with 20 humanoid robot teams and running enthusiasts crossing the starting line together to challenge their limits on the 21.0975-kilometer course.
However, multiple videos circulating online show that the previously highly anticipated Unitree Robotics G1 humanoid robot fell down while running, but then got up and continued the race.
Unitree Robotics issued a statement saying, "Unitree has not participated in any competitions recently, and has been mainly busy preparing for the live broadcast of the humanoid robot combat. The G1 humanoid robot has been sold to many customers worldwide since it was shipped last year and has been used for a long time. Therefore, several independent teams also used our robots in this marathon competition. For example, our customers participated in the competition using their own algorithms, so you can see many of our robots on site. Several independent teams are using them, and the performance of the robots varies greatly depending on the operator or developer. Please do not misunderstand. Like other electronic products, the performance of robots is closely related to the user. We hope everyone can work together to promote the progress of the robotics industry."
A representative from Unitree Robotics further explained that the G1 robot on display was modified by the client team using their own algorithms and hardware. For example, the City Interconnect Technology team added a road perception system and optimized the battery life of the G1. Its performance reflects the client team's technical adaptation, rather than any defects in the product itself. "Like other electronic products, the performance of robots is highly dependent on the user's debugging and optimization. We hope that the outside world will give the industry more understanding and tolerance."
Seemingly in response to the criticism, on April 24, Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of Unitree Robotics, met with the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, presenting the company's self-developed intelligent robot product matrix to the Chief Executive's team through a dynamic demonstration. During the technical exchange, innovative products such as quadruped robots and bionic robotic arms demonstrated advanced functions such as walking on complex terrain and grasping and transporting objects.
However, the current development of humanoid robots is significantly below public market expectations.
02 Humanoid Robot: Cerebellum underdeveloped, cerebrum completely underdeveloped
Humanoid robots represent one of the best forms of embodied intelligence, emphasizing the agent's ability to interact with and act autonomously in relation to its environment. Embodied intelligence is an intelligent system capable of environmental perception, intelligent interaction, and action planning. It comprises three core modules: a perception module, an interaction module, and a motion control module. Through humanoid robots that interact with and perceive their environment, make autonomous decisions, and execute plans, task-level interaction is achieved.
The task execution mode of humanoid robots is similar to that of autonomous vehicles, both based on three major modules: perception, decision-making, and motion control. Humanoid robots receive instructions through functions such as speech recognition and environmental perception in their "brain," and perform high-level planning such as task breakdown. Subsequently, the cerebellum optimizes the path planning and finally issues decision-making instructions, driving the servo system to move the robot and complete the task. During task execution, the general understanding and multi-level reasoning capabilities of the large-scale model endow the humanoid robot with the core of embodied intelligence, enabling it to better understand generalized tasks.
However, judging from public competitions, current humanoid robots still have many problems: autonomous orientation is difficult, proving they cannot automatically find their way based on onboard maps; battery life is too poor, requiring battery changes or even a change of personnel after running only a few kilometers, and alcohol spraying is also needed to cool them down; balance is poor, requiring staff to run alongside them during competitions, and even support to prevent falls, and they have difficulty getting up on their own after a fall; even if the robot's head falls off, its two feet can still move forward, clearly indicating the head is dispensable; arm swinging movements are clear and there is no misalignment, but the arms are unsure of their function after a fall; in actual movement, most humanoid robots do not run, but walk, without the process of both feet leaving the ground simultaneously...
Some netizens jokingly say that current humanoid robots have "incomplete cerebellar development and completely underdeveloped cerebrum." To some extent, this also proves that humanoid robots are still a long way from true industrialization and commercialization.
03 Humanoid robots need a more powerful brain
As early as 70 years ago, embodied intelligence was seen as one of the paths to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). However, due to the immaturity of various technologies at that time, it experienced ups and downs. Clearly, the current surge of interest in embodied intelligence is driven by the third wave of AI.
The fundamental difference between this wave of embodied intelligence and the robots we've discussed before lies in the level of intelligence. For example, the robots working in factories, which Musk has been touting for the past two years, were already a reality decades ago. The principle is simply to program robots to perform predetermined actions in a known environment. Not only is the level of intelligence low, but it's also passive intelligence. It can never possibly know what it means to act when necessary.
However, in the era of neural networks, true embodied intelligence requires initiative, much like in the movies, to acquire information about the world through perception and then transform that information into a form that machines can process. For example, converting images into pixel values and text into word vectors. Based on this, the machine makes its own decisions and interacts with the world. This also means that the market positioning of robots is likely to shift from industrial scenarios to our daily lives, which is the key factor behind the booming embodied intelligence market.
As the "brain" of a humanoid robot, the chip's performance directly determines the robot's intelligence and overall performance. For example, Unitree Robotics uses a top-of-the-line 8-core high-performance CPU and an NVIDIA Jetson Orin high-computing-power module, making it more technologically advanced than similar robots. Taking the G1 as an example, with this support, it can simulate tens of thousands of falls and recoveries in a simulation environment through deep reinforcement learning (DRL), ultimately achieving complex actions such as "automatic recovery after falling" and "single-legged obstacle avoidance."
NVIDIA's high-performance GPU chips, with their superior graphics processing capabilities, have significantly enhanced its ability to recognize visual information and handle various complex tasks, achieving a qualitative leap. Meanwhile, several domestic technology companies have also made key breakthroughs, successfully propelling chip technology from the experimental stage to commercial application.
The original Walker was mainly equipped with Intel i7 7500U chips with a frequency of 2.7GHz and Intel i5 6200U chips with a frequency of 2.3GHz. The upgraded Walker X mainly features Intel i7-8665U (dual-socket, 1.9GHz) + NVIDIA GT1030 graphics card with 384 cores.
Fourier Intelligence's GR-1 is also the first humanoid robot with end-to-end environmental perception capabilities, and its central processing unit mainly uses an i7 13700H.
In 2024, Engine AI's PM01 humanoid robot was the first to deeply integrate an Intel N97 processor with an NVIDIA Jetson Orin module, marking a new era of heterogeneous computing for humanoid robots. This innovative combination, through the collaborative optimization of CPU and GPU, achieved breakthrough improvements in energy efficiency, real-time response, and scalability.
The Jetson AGX Orin 64GB equipped in the Zhiyuan robot boasts extreme AI computing power, with 275 TOPS of INT8 computing power, which is 8 times that of the previous generation Jetson AGX Xavier. It supports running multiple complex AI models (such as VLM visual language model and SLAM algorithm) simultaneously.
Recently, Black Sesame Technologies will equip the "Tianwen" robot with a more intelligent "brain" and "cerebellum" based on the new Huashan A2000 and Wudang C1236 chips. "The A2000 chip is dedicated to enabling 'Tianwen' to possess human common sense and knowledge, thereby achieving human-level decision-making; the C1236 chip enables parallel processing of AI computing tasks and control tasks, providing reliable guarantees for 'Tianwen's' stable operation and precise operation in complex environments."
The A2000 is defined as a "high-performance chip platform designed specifically for next-generation AI models." The Lite, Standard, and Pro versions of the chip are comparable in performance to one, two, and four industry flagship chips, respectively.
The "flagship chip" mentioned here refers to NVIDIA's OrinX. The A2000Pro chip is equivalent to four OrinX chips, meaning it can compete with NVIDIA's upcoming flagship chip Thor, which has a computing power of 1000 TOPS.
The first Embossed Intelligence Games kicked off on April 4th.
The humanoid robot marathon is just the beginning. The competition tests the humanoid robot's ability to move and run for extended periods, allowing for the identification and resolution of problems. However, unlocking more movement patterns requires more comprehensive and complex testing across multiple dimensions.
The first Embossed Intelligent Robot Games will be held in Huishan District, Wuxi City from April 24 to 26, 2025.
More than 100 companies from across the country have gathered at the Games, bringing nearly 200 exhibits. Following the opening ceremony, the Games will feature competitive events such as sprinting, cross-country running, football, basketball, dance, and combat sports, with capabilities in areas such as intelligence, motion planning, and robot design being key assessment points. The application competitions will focus on tasks such as material handling, intelligent grasping, indoor rescue, and innovative scenarios, showcasing the comprehensive capabilities of robots in completing complex tasks such as environmental recognition, grasping, and planning design from multiple perspectives.
In the racing event, Unitree Robotics will compete against the National and Local Jointly Constructed Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center (Beijing), the National and Local Jointly Constructed Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (Shanghai), and robot companies from Shenzhen, Shanghai, Xi'an, Chongqing, and other places.
It is understood that in addition to the intense speed race, Unitree Robotics will also participate in a dance performance. It will perform alongside robots from Dongguan Benmo Technology Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen UBTECH Robotics Corp.
Some analysts believe that Unitree Robotics' sudden announcement of its participation in the inaugural Embossed Intelligent Robot Games is related to its product's performance in the Beijing Robot Half Marathon held in late April. Although Unitree Robotics stated that it did not participate and that the robots were purchased by a client for demonstration purposes, and that Unitree Robotics did not conduct any specific adjustments before the competition, the results still generated some public attention for the company. Participating in this Embossed Intelligent Robot Games may be Unitree Robotics' attempt to reaffirm its technological strength, and it is also one of the highlights of the event.
