While it seems like a new humanoid robot emerges every month, we’ve yet to see one move as quickly or with as much precision as the model unveiled by Chinese company Astribot.
In March, we saw two impressive offerings from OpenAI. One is a laundry-folding robot from Norway’s 1X that demonstrates impressive soft-touch skills, and the other is a robot from Figure that demonstrates truly next-generation natural language thinking abilities. In April, Boston Dynamics wowed us with the amazing dexterity built into its new Atlas robot, while China’s UBTech impressed us with its talking bot Walker S.
But today’s video showcasing the skills of an AI robot called S1 from relatively unknown Shenzhen-based Astribot, a subsidiary of Stardust Intelligence, shows that practical machines that can do household chores are a long way off. Hi’s fast. It’s accurate. And it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.
According to Astribot, the humanoid can perform movements at a maximum speed of 10 meters per second and handle a payload of 10 kg on each arm. This speed, as shown in the video, is fast enough to pull a tablecloth out from under a pyramid of wine glasses without breaking them.
But the robot is not only fast, but also accurate. He can open and pour wine, peel a cucumber, flip a sandwich in a frying pan, and write calligraphy. The video also shows that the robot imitates human movements very well, which means it must be a good learner.
Of course, the video also raised a few questions. Does S1 have a bottom half? All the humanoids we’ve seen so far have some sort of means of transportation, but this one appears to be a fairly stationary bot. Also curious to know a little about Astribot’s history and support and the likelihood of the S1 going into production.
What is known so far is that the company was founded in 2022 in Shenzhen, and that the robot took about a year to develop and is expected to be commercially available later this year.