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Creepy Video Shows Humanoid Robot Dancing, Exercising And Throwing Punches
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Humanoid robots just took yet another step towards being even more human-like. Now they can dance, exercise, and even throw a few punches just by mimicking human movements.
This particular humanoid robot is called ExBody2 and it was created by scientists at UC-San Diego, UC-Berkeley, MIT, and Nvidia. It works by utilizing reinforcement learning, which Live Science explains is "a subset of machine learning in which the robot is fed large amounts of data to ensure it takes the optimal route in any given situation."
"The model is trained in simulation with Reinforcement Learning and then transferred to the real world," the researchers wrote. "It decouples keypoint tracking with velocity control, and effectively leverages a privileged teacher policy to distill precise mimic skills into the target student policy, which enables high-fidelity replication of dynamic movements such as running, crouching, dancing, and other challenging motions."
In their research paper, published to the preprint server ArXiv, the scientists wrote, "Overly simplistic tasks could limit the training policy's ability to generalize to new situations, while overly complex tasks might exceed the robot's operational capabilities, leading to ineffective learning outcomes. Part of our dataset preparation, therefore, includes the exclusion or modification of entries that featured complex lower body movements beyond the robot's capabilities."
The dataset they used for their ExBody2 humanoid robot consisted of over 2,800 movements from the more than 11,000 individual human movements and 40 hours of detailed motion data from the Archive of Motion Capture As Surface Shapes (AMASS) dataset. The robot also can copy a researcher's movement in real time, using code titled "HybrIK: Hybrid Analytical-Neural Inverse Kinematics for Body Mesh Recovery," which was developed by the Machine Vision and Intelligence Group at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
So now, robots can not only do things like perform surgeries by just watching videos, they can also basically just copy what we do by watching us do it. No wonder thousands of humanoid robots with advanced artificial intelligence are set to begin invading workplaces and homes in 2025.
Apple Is Working On A 'lifelike' Robot Lamp, And It's Just As Cute As You'd Expect
Apple Machine Learning Research has released a short video and a twelve-page accompanying paper showcasing the importance of human-like movement in its prototyped robot.
This isn't the first time we've heard Apple may be gearing up to release an Apple robot. In April 2024, rumors of Apple's secretive robotics work surfaced, with the company alleged to be designing two different robots.
Now, it seems as though Apple's hardware engineering division and AI group have produced something worth showing off. And frankly, the design is a little too familiar.
The new tabletop robot, first spotted by MacRumors, isn't just lamp-like — it is a lamp. It's not hard to draw direct comparisons to Luxo Jr, Pixar's mascot.
The video starts by showcasing the robot's lifelike movement.
The movement is called ELEGNT, which stands for expressive and functional movement design for non-anthropomorphic robot. It seems a bit of a stretch as far as acronyms go, however, it does move in a rather elegant way.
It's immediately evident that the viewer is meant to be endeared to the robot. The fluid and expressive movements convey a curious, gentle demeanor.
The video demonstrates how a lifelike, non-anthropomorphic robot could interact with a person. The person uses gestures to control the robot, showing how waving, pointing, and pushing could be used to bring the light closer, change its focus, or move it further away. When they move the book, the robot follows.
Another use case could be switching from a desk lamp to a projector. A person working on a 3D printer demonstrates this as the robot pulls up and projects a relevant tutorial to help them.
But, overall, it highlights how an expressive robot could enhance user engagement. This is especially notable when the person asks the robot to check the weather, and it first turns to look out a window.
"Through a user study comparing expression-driven versus function-driven movements across six task scenarios, our findings indicate that expression-driven movements significantly enhance user engagement and perceived robot qualities," the abstract reads.
"This effect is especially pronounced in social-oriented tasks."
It's likely that this robot is the same one we had heard about in August. It has been suggested that the robot could be slated for release as early as 2026 or 2027, and is planned to have a price in the region of $1,000.
Apple's Pixar-like Lamp-bot Proves Machines Can Be Friendly
Luxo Jr. Has been brightening up every Pixar film since 1995, when the anthropomorphic desk lamp first appeared on screen and stomped on the animation studio's logo in its opening credits. This character has now inspired researchers at Apple who have developed ways to make robots more expressive, and improve human-machine interactions – and it is simply adorable.
A team of three at Apple's Machine Learning Research division demonstrated how a robotic desk lamp that can move in place and gesture to communicate with people can be more engaging to use than one built to operate clinically. The group presented a paper as well as a comprehensive video, showing the robot executing six tasks in 'Expressive' and 'Functional' modes side by side for comparison.
You can find the video on this page over on Apple's site, as well as in the X post embedded below. As you'll see, the robot lamp is equipped with a camera, projector, and speaker in addition to its LED light.
With each task, the robot in 'Expressive' mode exhibits lifelike behaviors: from glancing outside the window before describing the weather, to nudging a glass towards the researcher when it's time to remind to drink water, to dancing along with them when there's music playing. As you'd expect, the lamp in 'Functional' mode simply does what it's told, using the minimal amount of movement necessary.
"Our findings indicate that expression-driven movements significantly enhance user engagement and perceived robot qualities. This effect is especially pronounced in social-oriented tasks," the researchers noted. I believe them whole-heartedly: when the robot hung its little head upon being told it couldn't come along for a hike, I literally said out loud, "Why not?"
The robot lamp responds to the researcher with 'lifelike' gestures of its ownApple
Beyond showcasing Apple's machine learning chops, this project also lends credence to an August 2024 report from Bloomberg, in which journalist Mark Gurman noted that Apple was building a robot with an articulating arm and an iPad-like display to help you control your smart home, answer video calls, and check your home security cameras. That report also stated the device could arrive by 2026 or 2027, and cost about US$1,000.
Last month, Apple also published a paper describing a framework to generate natural and expressive gestures in humanoid robots, like giving a thumbs-up to a student as they complete a math problem on a chalkboard. Clearly, robotics is on Apple's mind at the moment.
We'll have to wait and see if the company really puts these technologies into products we can buy. Apple did, after all, kill off its plan to build a self-driving car last year – and per Gurman's report, put the leader of that program on to this screen-equipped robot project. But if it's really making cute robots like this, that's a vision I can get behind.
Source: Apple
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