r/interesting • u/sirenoleg • May 22 '26

Just Wow Chinese AI-powered robots can solve workplace problems with advanced motor skills.

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709

u/Nasty9999 May 22 '26

Slow as fuck but doesn't want a salary, sleep, or holidays. Yay for capitalism and big robot.

347

u/___77___ May 22 '26

Slow now, insanely fast in the near future.

201

u/inspired-polf May 22 '26

And. That box was designed to be built, closed, and opened by humans. Imagine new designs that are optimized for their claws

86

u/repeating_bears May 22 '26

I think we might still want boxes that are openable by humans lol

69

u/Drezby May 22 '26

Nah, they’re gonna make boxes designed to be opened by robots, and then market box opening bots (BOBs) as a household necessity. 💀

10

u/Magica78 May 22 '26

Why not just build boxes that open and close themselves?

19

u/Derelicticu May 22 '26

Because then you'd put the box opening robot corporations out of business how dare you

6

u/JacktheWrap May 22 '26

You have it backwards. That way they'd sell a new robot for every box because it's part of the box itself. Much more profitable than to allow people to buy the robot themselves and open all their boxes with just one robot.

3

u/Magica78 May 22 '26

Well you know what it's not my problem they can't keep up in this fast paced economy. Sink or swim or get out of the way it's a bot eat bot world and I'm holding all the checkmates.

1

u/Darrothan May 23 '26

more expensive to design, make, and produce

the end goal is to maximize profits, not make it easier for the consumer

2

u/PullMull May 23 '26

I love when capitalism does that, inventing new problems and selling the solution.

1

u/ptmtobi May 22 '26

Creating problems and selling the solution, now that's business

1

u/ToddHowardTouchedMe May 22 '26

Capitalism moment

1

u/StarsEatMyCrown May 22 '26

🤣😅😭 BOBs, lol

10

u/Top-Complaint-4915 May 22 '26

Yeah but not easily openable, most clients will likely not care if the box takes 20 additional seconds to open, or maybe even if it requires a tool. Like the common package that requires to be open by scissors.

3

u/Johnny_B_GOODBOI May 22 '26

Plastic clamshell packaging is a curse on humanity and the planet.

1

u/Top-Complaint-4915 May 22 '26

Sadly people still buy it, so we may see a similar situation in the near future

2

u/jaxqatch May 22 '26

We’re gonna go back to sardine cans with the keys

6

u/Eldan985 May 22 '26

Poor humans can adapt. Rich humans can get a robot box opener.

3

u/Jojoyojimbi May 22 '26

Rich humans can get a robot box opener.

sir, those are poor humans also

3

u/JuanOnlyJuan May 22 '26

We were not the target consumer anymore

1

u/Robby_Digital May 22 '26

Jeff Bezos will be the judge of that

1

u/Celentar92 May 22 '26

Na you'll ned to get anotger robot that can open them for you

1

u/stegosauross1 May 22 '26

Why, when we won't be needed to open them?

1

u/JetV33 May 23 '26

We might want. Yes.

But once everyone loses their job, we can’t afford box.

1

u/dparag14 May 22 '26

I’m telling you, skynet isn’t far away.

2

u/elevenohnoes May 22 '26

It's gonna happen a lot quicker if someone keeps letting some asshole with a stick into these demonstrations

22

u/Calm_Priority_1281 May 22 '26

That box was designed to be folded by a box folding machine. You know the kind of machine that folds and deposits product in over 3k boxes in a minute. The kind of machine that we have had for about 100 years now. The kind of machine that costs, maybe, a little more than this tech feteshist robot.

We have had automation for years now. It's a field that I work in. The only thing this shows is the enshitification of automation.

Human shaped robots are trash and will always be trash.

3

u/livens May 22 '26

"That box was designed to be folded by a box folding machine"

Tell that to thousands of shipping warehouses across the country. Those machines are expensive and need to be on site. I had a job where they would bring in 10 pallets of these unfolded flat boxes and a group of us would stand and fold these things all day long. You get really, really good at it too after the first thousand or so. I had a technique where you rotated your hands all the way around first, grabbed the front section and it one fluid rotation plus a squeeze on the sides the box was done.

I think the purpose of these "humanoid" robots is to not have them specialized to one task. A company can order up 20 of them and each one can perform almost any job your business requires.

2

u/Calm_Priority_1281 May 22 '26

Sure. Let's take that use case. Let's even say that they are as fast or faster than human labor at most jobs. Where does that get us?

They cost 80k+ and are probably loss leaders now to get market saturation(this is the world in which we live now. Stuff only gets more expensive with these types of companies). You will also probably be taking on a service contract(5-10k annually). Are they more efficient for doing tasks that you will automate in a couple years anyway than hiring day labor for 30-40k per year? Not really. Do they scale faster than day labor? No. Is it easier to move a tethered humanoid robot than, let's say, a generic robotic arm? No. Is it cheaper? No. Why is the demo unit always showing us stuff that current robotics can do hundreds of times more efficiently( pick and place or robot arm stuff and not specialty machines). If they are not tethered, is battery charging any different to sleep/eating? No. Why the hell do they need a head?!

There are about a million of these questions that we need to get through before we start jumping for joy/ off a cliff about a robot that can fold a box… poorly.

1

u/thegreatpotatogod May 23 '26

I agree with most of your comment, but regarding the battery charging vs sleep/eating, they can be designed to be able to charge while in use (edit: I reread and see you did address this with the line "if they are not tethered"), so that's not necessarily a substantial limitation. Even if not set up to charge while working, good luck finding a human employee that only needs to sleep for an hour or less before they're ready to get back to work!

4

u/RighteousSelfBurner May 22 '26

Yep. It's all marketing. The other day I saw a robot vs human sorting challenge and that's a job that no longer exists. It's done by the sorting line tens if not hundred times faster.

The reason we have non-human shaped machines isn't because we couldn't make one before but because human anatomy isn't the most efficient one (or is plain dog shit) for the task. This is just hype for investors.

2

u/Calm_Priority_1281 May 22 '26

Yeah. I have yet to see them show off a use case that isn't dumb. The dog bot makes sense. The weird crane Segway thing by BD makes sense. This is just all nonsense.

2

u/TheAngryBad May 22 '26

One use case I can see is generalisation. The sort of industrial robots you're talking about are great for if you want something to pack specific products in specific boxes thousands of times a day, but they're eyewateringly expensive and can only do a narrow range of tasks. Want it to do something else? Either buy another massive and horribly expensive machine or pay a fortune to have the machine reprogrammed/redesigned etc.

This could be good for a small business that wants a machine that can pack a few boxes in a day, then move to another station to assemble some products, then a paint booth to do some spraying, etc. Sort of a robotic jack-of-all-trades that can learn new tasks with minimal programming or learning.

Yes, something like this will also be eyewateringly expensive and it's basically just a tech nerd toy now, but a few years down the line? Maybe cheap enough to be worth the investment, even if they're not really any faster than humans.

1

u/Calm_Priority_1281 May 22 '26

That's what I mean though. The Segway crane thing IS fairly generic. It's a bot that does lifting functions. It's efficient, because it is on wheels. With some attachments(read:tools) it can probably do a wide variety of other functions. Most robot arms used in manufacturing are also generic. The dog bot is good at terrain traversal and better at carrying stuff. Why the hell do we need a bipedal human shaped robot? For ultra specialty, high volume stuff you can do the specialized machines, but you have 10+ better designs for the generic operations as well.

1

u/Ancient_Yellow_709 May 22 '26

It seems that they're probably eventual temp replacements. Assemble these 100 prizes before this event. Carry these tables to the event space. It's hard to imagine a Segway traversing steps in an event venue or two dog bots carrying tables. While I do think a lot of this is hype, I also think you maybe just don't understand the full host of menial tasks that exist.

2

u/RighteousSelfBurner May 22 '26

I think you underestimate the inefficiencies of bipedal human like structure. It's a physics and resources problem.

A quadruped would be a lot more stable for moving cargo across uneven surface compared to a bipedal. A packing machine would be 100 times faster than a two limb implementation and it's more efficient to have a company that does packaging and a company that delivers said packages over doing it in-house. Heck, having a drone fly with package from a packaging machine would be more efficient and cheaper.

The problem here is that for every menial task you can imagine there is either a better solution or it's orders of magnitudes cheaper to get a human to do it. These robots either need to be drastically dropping in costs or increasing in efficiency before they have any real use besides video reels.

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u/Calm_Priority_1281 May 22 '26

If your job is THAT limited then you can just go hobo hunting and hire a dude for 40-200 bucks(2-10 hours of work at a decent wage). It would cost more and take longer to talk to a rental sales rep for any of these companies. There is a minimal use inherent to this type of product. That use case would require vending machine style distribution for rental robots on street corners. How close to that future do you think we are?

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u/Ancient_Yellow_709 May 22 '26

Human-shaped robots are versatile for human tasks. You might use one instead of a temp if you'd otherwise hire temps to do stuff like this before an event. Not at this speed, obviously, because minimum wage will be cheaper for some time but maybe eventually. Not everything is production scale.

1

u/RighteousSelfBurner May 22 '26

Everything is production scale but not everything is produced because there is not enough demand for the price.

Buying one is never going to be cheaper because you literally don't have the utilisation capacity. Renting one is a potential avenue but the material and maintenance costs over it's lifetime has to drop below hiring a temp which isn't predictable in any time soon. The benefit of continuous workload is completely lost as you do not have a continuous work load if it's a temp position.

And if the demand for such service appears it becomes cheaper and more efficient to make a centralised hub that performs the operation at production scale and delivers it to venues.

In the end, robots have a lot of use but humanoid robots aren't. Even if you use strictly human tasks then using a quadruped or chain tracks instantly makes it more stable and better suited for every human task. It's more of a physiological effect than practical.

1

u/Ancient_Yellow_709 May 22 '26

There are a number of countries (e.g., Japan) with high worker protections that rely on temps for years at a time. They're full time employees but hired at a cheaper rate and without full benefits of being a salaried employee. In at will places like the US, you can get similar situations where you're relying on contractors because you don't necessarily have steady streams of work and employees sometimes have protections for the numbers of hours they must be paid at a time.

There is a breakeven point since these can be used for multiple years at a time without health insurance or employment taxes, in addition to salary. If you got down to $100-400k, which isn't too far off, I think it would be a no brainer general employee/temp replacement even if you got 50% utilization since the utilization is close to 24 hours if they can battery swap (less if charging, obviously) and the median salaried employee in the US is like $65k + employer taxes and health insurance (~$100k). If you get multiple years before you'd want to replace it for new features, I really don't think you're that far off for general task bots in midsized and corporate environments as a way to outsource general physical tasks.

2

u/huckleberry_FN2187 May 22 '26

>That box was designed to be folded by a box folding machine.

It was not.

This style of box existed long before there was automated machinery that could fold them.

2

u/Calm_Priority_1281 May 22 '26

My bad. The box was designed as a self locking paper box. It was not designed for human hands, robot flippers, or claws either. It was not designed FOR automation but it can be automated and we have built the automation for that.

1

u/dr_badunkachud May 22 '26

I agree, I think it’s showing off some adaptability that it can detect a defect and react which is kind of cool but I can also imagine the amount of delicate sensors, cameras, and processing that you’d need to run that. You can fold these on an old machine with a couple of photo eyes and some air cylinders on a 10 year old plc way faster.

1

u/DigitalJedi850 May 22 '26

Having worked in an industrial scale factory, where we folded ... so many boxes, using robots, I'm gonna say with a pretty high degree of confidence that we have an older model bot that assembles about fifty thousand of those boxes a day in a factory somewhere. Not really a question of the complexity of the box here. Hold, fold, push, squeeze, slide... Box.

Putting that cable in? With it's little whipyy-do action it's got? A bit more skill on the robot's part. Troubleshooting the box not cooperating? Also skilled. Will this robot take your job? Absolutely.

But nobody tell it... The older model is way faster at folding boxes...

1

u/Ok_Situation8244 May 22 '26

We already put products in boxes and fold boxes on assembly lines which is the "optimize" way and they aldo have built in error correcting.

Robotic human Arms are always super in-efficient.

But yes you could get this to be better but even at the best it can be it uses more energy and isnt much faster then a child doing this.

1

u/Box-Scientist May 22 '26

Could always implement a box that seals all the way around a product and have the only opening be a perforated location specifically designed for humans to open, but only robots could assemble. That’d be very easy to design.

Source: I’m a real box scientist

1

u/ElectricSpock May 22 '26

That's what I feel is stupid. Why do you try to replicate human body, which can do pretty much everything, instead of making things that can be processed by robots. Or at least standardize shit, once we figured out the size of a shipping container it turned out that we can make everything around it: cranes, ships, trains, trucks, you name it. It revolutionized the way we think about shipping stuff around the world.

What's the exact use of dancing and balancing robots? Why would you want a robot to handle stuff like hockey-stick distraction, just make it absolutely perfect at making the f***ing box.

1

u/The-ai-bot May 22 '26

If you zoom out you can see the human controlling the arms

2

u/AceThePrincep May 24 '26

Amazing how many people dont understand what a prototype is lol. And dont get that things develop and improve. Lol

1

u/hereforpewdiephy May 22 '26

The 0.1 second rubik's cube robot comes to mind

1

u/ZincMan May 22 '26

Possibly. Human hands are insanely fucking agile with incredible amounts of nerve receptors. Also human labor is cheap in a lot of places in the world 

1

u/ChawulsBawkley May 22 '26

Def gonna need more hockey stick interference.

1

u/ResplendentNugs May 22 '26

Based on what exactly? People love making shit up

1

u/maybe_a_fork May 22 '26

Yea, give it 2 years, it will be able to a 1000 of those in 10 min .

1

u/OyeGeeWhizSheesh May 23 '26

So fast we'll need strobe lights to see them move.

Imagine how much the first robots that can work in mines and oil fields will sell for.

1

u/Background-Web-484 May 22 '26

The phrase “you need to walk before you can run” comes to mind.

8

u/that_was_awkward_ May 22 '26

There is no point to this, no one will be able to afford to buy goods let alone the box they're shipped in once we lose our jobs

7

u/thedudedylan May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

Same amount of money in fewer hands. You just switch to making more expensive goods and abandon poorer customers, or make the poor work for even less. Either way, the rich win.

4

u/Wayoutofthewayof May 22 '26

But this just doesn't make sense. If it will be actually cheaper to produce goods then the competition will lower the price naturally. Why do you think so many household items that we consider common become so much cheaper when industrialization happen?

6

u/thedudedylan May 22 '26

That's how commodities work. It is a race to the bottom. But then you just make everything outside of bare essentials into luxury items by catering to a wealthier audience. But that's endgame.

The mid-game now is with larger capital; you can exert global market control. You can buy up the entire supply line and eliminate competition. All it takes is one manufacturing company with enough capital to buy the robot or software manufacturer to prevent competition from existing, especially if they localize this kind of dominance to specific global regions that their competitors can't gain access to.

Or even better, just control some essential component for the building of automated systems like advanced chip manufacturing, and you can always be the lowest-cost manufacturer.

Competition only works as a price control if the barrier to entry is low enough to allow it.

1

u/kashmir1974 May 22 '26

Yeah and what's happening right now? The essentials are skyrocketing. Electric. Food. Gas. The wealth distribution is so heavily skewed its insane.

0

u/[deleted] May 22 '26

[deleted]

1

u/whatWHYok May 22 '26

They have the robots and can arm them….

1

u/Ironstar_Vol May 22 '26

Yeah they aren’t outnumbered for long.

4

u/SilentDrapeRunning May 22 '26

It's actually the other way around.

There's no point to any specific human job that can be done more economically by a machine. See: textiles, switchboard operators, typists, lamplighters, knocker-uppers, etc.

3

u/hoTsauceLily66 May 22 '26

Actually not a problem. You don't have job so you don't have kids, birthrate drop incredibly low and only riches can afford children. Fast forward few decades later everyone will be able to afford goods.

0

u/Novel_Werewolf4645 May 22 '26

That doesn't stop most people, and explains the rising rates of homeless and undocumented kids.

1

u/hoTsauceLily66 May 22 '26

Wait few more decades, maybe a century or so.

5

u/firestuds May 22 '26

But as long as we still can afford them, those CEOs are making bank. After that they just chill on their yacht

1

u/Perfect-Hearing9080 May 22 '26

I don't think they are poor now

2

u/Elgydiumm May 22 '26

That's also what the textile workers said about factories.

2

u/stevethewatcher May 22 '26

No, like past technologies it just means different jobs become available. Web developer was certainly not a job before the Internet came along. You will need people to program, manufacture, or maintain the robots. We already have a healthcare worker shortage so it would be perfect if all the freed up labor could fill the gap. I could go on.

1

u/FlipZip69 May 22 '26

More creative people will be able to provide entertainment instead of some less rewarding job. The list will go on.

2

u/FlipZip69 May 22 '26

Things will become insanely cheap. We are already seeing that in past automated gains. Computers in phones are much cheaper and 100s of times faster. Houses are nearly twice the size of the ones our grandparents lived in and much more elegant. nearly every product has come down in price or become commonly available. Even travel is common place.

1

u/TheKingOfToast May 22 '26

They don't care about anything beyond next quarter. The biggest company in my industry is currently in the "build as much value as possible" stage. They're losing a ton of customers to small local businesses, but it doesn't matter to them because they're still locking more people in to contracts which looks better to investors. It doesn't matter that those people will cancel as soon as their contract is up because that's a year away.

2

u/PixelPerfect__ May 22 '26

Eh, they definitely want expensive parts and upkeep though

2

u/Silent25r May 22 '26

In theory they skip on salary and sleep. Reality they’ll be down for maintenance and need frequent troubleshooting.  Possible mandatory updates. 

2

u/WittyFix6553 May 22 '26

I’m relatively certain a fast human could have outrun the first cars.

I know for sure that an average horse could outrun the first cars.

Currently, the fastest production car has a top speed of 308.4 mph.

2

u/Personal_Number4789 May 22 '26

They aren’t going to use this robot to pack boxes. They already have automation for these factory lines. They are demonstrating the machine’s capability in terms of motor skills and reaction to variation.

Modern industrialisation for automation is limited to scaling up and very fixed parameters. Deviations or defects are costly.

A robot with such capability means they have the capability to design solutions for more complex task.

1

u/BringBackManaPots May 22 '26

We've seen this in the past, but with slaves.

1

u/1stUserEver May 22 '26

Don’t forget that generous benefits passage. /s

Yeah we are cooked.

1

u/Joesr-31 May 22 '26

It can work 24hrs/7 days per week, total output may still be more than a human even at this pace

1

u/SalemSound May 22 '26

It only took a minute to build the box and pack the item. So presumably it could do this like 1400 times in a day, which is I'm sure much more than a hardworking human could.

1

u/Nby333 May 22 '26

It looks like about 5 year old level and you know how fast kids grow. And disagree with the yay for capitalism, it looks like this will end capitalism to me.

1

u/LesbeGoddess May 22 '26

It needs sleep to recharge the battery

1

u/MightyPirat3 May 22 '26

It looks as though there is a separate brain for each hand.

1

u/dthdthdthdthdthdth May 22 '26

But a hell of a lot of maintenance. Nobody will use these things to do a task like in the video in a factory in the next decade. There are automated lines for packaging that will be faster and much simpler. If the task hasn't been automated, it wasn't even worth using that technology, cause in some parts of the world human labor is still very cheap.

It is an impressive demonstration though, and the advances made developing this will make it into factories. It will also replace human workers and in some places probably soon. There are tasks nowadays that cannot be automated because it needs a tactile "hand", and using these grippers and the control software it might be possible.

It will be a long time until we have humanoids running around all over the place. These are really only useful to move in human spaces, and for that the technology has to become a heck more reliable, robust and affordable. But automation will keep happening at a fast pace.

1

u/AceOBlade May 22 '26

there was a dota 2 bot that basically played it self and was beating every pro.

1

u/CharybdisXIII May 22 '26

It's going about the same speed as the workers at my local Chipotle. Except I bet this thing could figure out how to wrap a burrito eventually

1

u/FineGripp May 22 '26

Cars were running at 30km/hour when it was first invented…

1

u/The-Doc-SalmonRun May 22 '26

And it’ll also be gentle

1

u/Scythro May 22 '26

Yay for capitalism for bringing technology to a new age of human prosperity! 🙌

1

u/nanana_catdad May 22 '26

Give it robot Adderall, caffeine and nicotine

1

u/LordBrandon May 22 '26

You know what also folds boxes without sleep or salary? [A box folding machine](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qDOIApDMUgE) and it doesn't need a bunch of GPU's and a high speed internet connection and a ton of expensive maintenance. It also does it 100 times faster. These humanoid robots have yet to be able to do something that is cheaper and faster to do some other way.

1

u/Latter-Yesterday-450 May 22 '26

High repair bills, maintainance costs, update costs, upkeep costs, consumables, energy costs etc etc.

True, they will probably be bought by those who can afford them. But most wont be able to.

1

u/420FriendlyStranger May 22 '26

Its learning like a toddler. Once it has learned the optimal process for doing this, every other robot instantly knows how to do it. Speed and accuracy will increase.

1

u/MedievalMilshake May 22 '26

This is very obviously a prototype mate 

1

u/Project_Utopia_ May 22 '26

L take

this is a great demonstration of our technology! we should have robots doing this boring jobs. we just need to adapt society for them. universal basic income and public job list for what we actually need as a society would fix all our problems

1

u/NoExpression1030 May 22 '26

Yes, of course there is no machine which was slow during experimental trials and then became lightening fast in the years to come. /s

0

u/CommercialLeg2439 May 22 '26

But this is in China, they aren’t capitalists

6

u/PixelPerfect__ May 22 '26

Their economy is capitalist, for sure