In the video two robots appear in a ring similar to that of UFC fights. The cameraman zooms out and at that moment one of the robots throws a spectacular roundhouse kick and hits his enemy in the head. This one falls round like a human would.
A human probably wouldn’t get up after a hit like that. The robot did.
He does it in an amorphous, very science fiction way, twisting himself so that his legs allow him to do it again. The fight continues in a slightly ridiculous way: the robot that has decapitated him continues trying to give those type of roundhouse kicks in the best Van Damme style, while the poor decapitated robot continues fighting with his head completely detached and hanging from his body.
The video, absolutely viral on X, was shared by Elon Musk on his official account this Saturday. It has 11 million visits at the time of writing these lines. Accompanying the video, a message: “robot fights are funny.”
We could consider it that way, of course, but since it happened with the April Robot Half Marathonthat fight is once again reliable proof that the Chinese robotics industry is advancing non-stop.
A year ago those robots seemed quite absurd to us. They ran clumsily and the edition of the race was a disaster, and something similar happened with the humanoid robots that also They got into kickboxing fights. They were fun to watch because, again, they didn’t look particularly lethal.
Chinese humanoid robots get serious
With these things change. This year’s event, called URKL and organized by the Chinese robotics company EngineAIshowed those robot fights of 32 international teams that you can see on the Shenzen Story YouTube channel. All of these teams, yes, used the same humanoid robot, the T800 model of this company.
In fights it is true that the robots are still clumsy and that when they end up hitting the opponent they do so more by luck than anything else, but also that the aforementioned evolution of these humanoid robots is palpable. The prize for the winner of the tournament, which is held in several sessions, will take home a prize of 10 million yuan (approximately 1.3 million euros)
The T800 robot, the absolute protagonist of these combats, measures 173 centimeters and has 29 movable joints throughout its body. Each one of them has a price of 36,000 euros and its weight ranges between 75 and 85 kg.
In their heads they have an artificial vision model and an omnidirectional radar and a processor that is responsible for computing all the data that arrives. The motors in the joints can develop up to 450 Nm of torque, which allows you to perform, for example, those striking flying kicks in the video.
Beyond the specifications and the spectacular nature of the fights, the objective of these competitions is to promote the development of Chinese robotics, but also to expand its potential applications. Fighting is a perfect way to validate both the design and hardware of the robots themselves and their software.
Zhao Tongyang, CEO of EngineAI, explained in Global Times how “we want to use the competition to drive industry research and development.” The organizers also commented how this competition was about more than just brute strength, and evaluated both the effectiveness of the blows and stability, defensive and evasive ability, and general durability.
And certainly the robots are beginning to show that they fight better and better. Let’s hope that is never its true purpose.
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