Video of Super-Fast, Super-Smooth Humanoid Robot Will Drop Your Jaw

Original article by Michael Franco Copied and bastardized by Christopher Tavolazzi April 26, 2024

Stardust Intelligence Unveils Versatile AI-Powered Humanoid at World Robot Conference

Stardust Intelligence is set to unveil its latest humanoid robot, the Astribot S1, at the World Robot Conference in Beijing this week. The company has released a demo video highlighting the robot’s versatility and showcasing a range of impressive capabilities.

Advanced Dexterity and Practicality

The Astribot S1 features a human-like upper body mounted on a wheeled base, prioritizing dexterity and practicality. In the video, the Astribot S1 can be seen executing a variety of tasks, from household chores to delicate manual operations. For example, it effortlessly prepares a waffle, carefully managing each step from pouring batter to flipping the waffle with a seamless wrist rotation.

Precision in Delicate and Complex Tasks

The robot’s precision extends to the art of making kung fu tea, a task that requires careful handling of different tools and materials with varying sensitivities, such as fragile ceramic cups and heavier metal kettles. The robot adapts its grip and force on the fly, preventing damage to delicate items while maintaining control over sturdier ones.

Musical and Agile Performances

Another standout moment in the video comes when the Astribot S1 performs a complex musical performance playing the yangqin, a traditional Chinese hammered dulcimer. This requires not only precise control of the striking instruments but also the ability to adjust based on the instrument’s feedback, showcasing the robot’s advanced sensory integration.

The Astribot S1 is also capable of dynamic and agile physical tasks, such as practicing Wing Chun martial arts or even making accurate basketball shots. These abilities highlight the robot’s agility and ability to manage complex sequences of motion, further cementing its position as a highly versatile AI assistant.

Integrated AI Architecture for Enhanced Learning

Key to the Astribot S1’s capabilities is Stardust Intelligence’s Design for AI architecture, which tightly integrates AI with advanced robotics hardware. This allows the robot to learn from and interact with its environment in a human-like manner. The robot’s system is designed to mimic human decision-making and physical interaction, enabling it to handle tasks that would traditionally require human dexterity and judgment. With a modular design for its head, torso, and limbs, Astribot S1 combines functionality with adaptability, making it suitable for various environments—from homes to factories.

Towards Artificial General Intelligence

Beyond its immediate utility, the Astribot S1 is a step towards a broader vision of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). By continuously learning through interactions with the real world and using multimodal data like touch, sight, and sound, it promises to evolve and improve over time, potentially making AGI a reality in the near future.

Public Debut and Commercialization Plans

The Astribot S1 is scheduled to make its public debut at the World Robot Conference in Beijing on August 21. Stardust Intelligence aims to commercialize the robot later this year, targeting research, commercial, and home applications.

While the demonstration is impressive, it’s important to note that the video showcases carefully selected tasks in controlled environments. Real-world performance and adaptability remain to be tested. As robotics technology continues to advance, the Astribot S1 represents another step toward more capable and versatile humanoid assistants.

The S1’s Dexterity Could Make It a Great Helper in the Kitchen

While it seems that another humanoid robot is being released every week, we’ve yet to see one move as quickly or with as much precision as the model just released by Chinese company, Astribot. We dare you to not be impressed.

The AI-powered humanoid robot space is starting to get almost as crowded as the cereal aisle at your local supermarket. Last month alone, we were treated to two impressive offerings from OpenAI. One, a laundry-folding bot from Norwegian collaborators 1X that showed off impressive “soft-touch” skills, and the other a bot from collaborators Figure that demonstrated truly next-gen natural language reasoning ability. Then this month, Boston Dynamics blew us away with the astounding dexterity embedded in its new Atlas robot and China’s UBTech impressed its soft-touch speaking bot, Walker S. And the list goes on.

But today’s video showing off the skills of an AI-powered bot known as S1 from a relatively unknown Shenzhen-based subsidiary of Stardust Intelligence called Astribot truly gave us the chills. It’s fast. It’s precise. And it’s unlike anything we’ve seen so far.

According to Astribot, the humanoid can execute movements with a top speed of 10 meters per second, and handle a payload of 10 kg per arm. The fact that its website shows that an adult male falls well short of both of these and other Astribot metrics shouldn’t be cause for alarm at all. That speed, as the video shows, is fast enough to pull a tablecloth out from under a stack of wine glasses without having them come crashing to the ground.

But the bot is not only speedy, but also incredibly precise, doing everything from opening and pouring wine, to gently shaving a cucumber, to flipping a sandwich in a frying pan, to writing a bit of calligraphy. The video also shows that the robot is very adept at mimicking human movements, which means it should be a good learner.

Astribot S1: Hello World!

Of course, the video has raised a few questions for us. Does the S1 have a lower half? All of the humanoids we’ve seen so far have some means of locomotion, but this seems to be a fairly stationary bot. We’re also curious to know a bit about Astribot’s history and backing and the likelihood that the S1 will eventually enter production. We’ve reached out to the company for some answers and will update this article if we find out more.

For now, we can glean from Astribot’s website that the company was founded in 2022 in Shenzhen, that the robot took about a year to develop, and that it is expected to be commercially available later this year. The site also indicates that the parent company, Stardust Intelligence, was founded by Lai Jie, who also worked with Tencent Robotics Laboratory, Baidu, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

The company also states: “The name of Astribot comes from the ancient Latin proverb ‘Ad astra per aspera,’ which means ‘a journey through hardship to reach stardust,’ which represents the company’s long-term plan and firm commitment to the development and popularization of AI robot technology.”

If Astribot does indeed have staying power, it is certainly going to heat up the space and gain the attention of the other humanoid robot makers. Let the bot wars begin!

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