alt Hacker NewsLooking at the video at the bottom of the page, the robot looks like an old man, especially in the trash bag throwing sequence. Compare that to the recent Chinese kung-fu robots video...
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The kawasaki robot had to do something much more impressive, which is to lift a table while another human is holding the other end.
The actual concern here is that there are too many cuts. If the whole table movement sequence was uncut and fully autonomous, that would mean they have the most advanced humanoid robot software in the world.
It means they can autonomously find the correct grasping location on the table for both arms, meaning the robot needs to have a model of the table. The robot needs to know at what height to hold the table to keep the table level and compensate for the human pulling on the object while balancing and autonomously following the direction the human is pulling in.
Of course, since there were many cuts, we don't really know whether that's true. We also don't know if teleoperation is involved or not.
The Chinese robot dancing is cool, because it shows what the hardware is capable of, but it doesn't really show anything on the software side. Contacts with objects are hard in robotics and the kung-fu choreography avoids them for obvious reasons.
Completely different situations. The Unitree demos are prerecorded movements with no real adaptability. While visually impressive, they are highly tuned to perform that specific sequence of actions. If you walked in front of one it would have zero awareness of you and you’d be hit. They’re essentially “blind”. The last video here is likely demonstrating a teleoperated humanoid.