هل Unitree G1 هو مستقبل الروبوتات؟ جربته بنفسي في معرض LEAP 2025! 😱🤯

قابلت الروبوت الصيني المذهل Unitree G1 وروبوت ينظف حمام السباحة

The transformation of Hangzhou’s old steelworks into a park is a tribute to China’s industrial past in a city of the future The congressional hearing about Chinese AI engine DeepSeek held in the US this April has propelled Hangzhou, the heart of China’s new digital economy, to the headlines. With companies such as DeepSeek, Unitree and Alibaba – whose payment app allowed me to get on the metro without needing to buy a ticket – headquartered in Hangzhou, China’s future in AI, robotics and automation is emanating from this city. Getting off the metro in the suburban area of Gongshu, the sun was shining on an old steelworks, overgrown with vines and flowers now that it is being transformed by Jiakun Architects and TLS Landscape Architecture into the Grand Canal Steelworks Park. The unfolding trade war might help to accelerate China’s journey into an automated future, leaving the world of factories behind, yet this new public space shows an impulse to commemorate the country’s economic history, and the forces that have shaped its contemporary built environment. Starting in Hangzhou and travelling more than 1,700km to Beijing, the Grand Canal is an engineering project built 2,500 years ago to connect the different regions of eastern China. The country’s geography means rivers flow from west to east: from higher elevations, culminating in the Himalayas, to the basin that is the country’s eastern seaboard. Historically, it was difficult to transport goods from mercantile centres in the south, including Hangzhou and Suzhou, to the political centre in Beijing up north. As a civil engineering project, the Grand Canal rivals the Great Wall, but if the Great Wall aims to protect China from the outside, the Grand Canal articulates Chinese commerce from the inside. The historic waterway has been an important conduit of economic and cultural exchange, enabling the movement of people and goods such as grain, silk, wine, salt and gravel across the country. It became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014. The state‑owned enterprise collective was founded, and the physical facility of Hangzhou steelworks built, in the 1950s during the Great Leap Forward, when China strove for self‑sufficiency, and wended its way through the country’s economic trajectory: first the economic chaos of the 1960s, then the reforms and opening up in the 1980s. Steel remains an important industry today in China, home to more than half of the world’s production, but the listing of the Grand Canal enabled city leaders to move production to a new site and decommission the Hangzhou steelworks. External mandates, including entry into the World Trade Organization, the Beijing Olympics and UNESCO listings, have been instrumentalised in the country to pursue a range of internal interests, particularly economical and real estate ones.  In 2016, the factory was shut down in 150 days, in what the company describes as a ‘heroic’ effort, and the site attracted tourists of industrial ruins. In the competition brief, Hangzhou planners asked for ‘as much of the existing blast furnaces and buildings’ as possible to be preserved. When I arrived in China in 2008, Chinese cities were notorious for heritage demolition, but today urban planners and architects increasingly work to preserve historical buildings. Just like several industrial sites in Beijing and Shanghai have been transformed into major public and cultural spaces in the past decade, in the Yangtze River Delta – of which Hangzhou is a major hub – several industrial sites along the Grand Canal’s course are being given a new lease of life. Today, the three blast furnaces of Hangzhou steelworks remain, with the silhouettes of their smokestacks easily recognisable from a distance. The project preserves as much as possible of the aesthetics of a steel mill with none of the danger or dust, ready to welcome instead new community facilities and cultural programmes in a vast and restored piece of landscape. Situated in a former working‑class district that has been gentrifying and welcoming young families, the new park is becoming a popular venue for music festivals, flower viewing in springtime and year‑round picnics – when I visited, parents were teaching their children to ride a bicycle, and students from Zhejiang University, about a kilometre from the park, were having lunch on the grass. New programmes accommodated in the old coke oven and steel mills will include a series of exhibition halls and spaces welcoming a wide range of cultural and artistic workshops as well as events – the project’s first phase has just completed but tenant organisations have not yet moved in, and works are ongoing to the north of the park. On the day of my visit, a student art exhibition was on display near one of the furnaces, with works made from detritus from the site, including old packing containers. The rehabilitated buildings also provide a range of commercial units, where cafés, restaurants, shops, a bookshop, ice cream shop and a gym have already opened their doors to visitors.  Several structures were deemed structurally unsafe and required demolition, such as the old iron casting building. The architects proposed to partially reconstruct it on its original footprint; the much more open structure, built with reclaimed bricks, now houses a semi‑outdoor garden. Material choices evoke the site’s industrial past: weathered steel, exposed concrete and large expanses of glazing dominate the landscape. The widespread use of red, including in an elevated walkway that traverses the park – at times vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese torii gate in the space below – gives a warm and reassuring earthiness to the otherwise industrial colour palette. Elements selected by the designers underwent sanitisation and detoxification before being reused. The landscaping includes old machinery parts and boulders; recuperated steel panels are for instance inlaid into the paving while pipes for pouring molten steel have been turned into a fountain. The train tracks that once transported material continue to run through the site, providing paths in between the new patches of vegetation, planted with local grasses as well as Japanese maples, camphors and persimmon trees. As Jiawen Chen from TLS describes it, the aesthetic feels ‘wild, but not weedy or abandoned’. The landscape architects’ inspiration came from the site itself after the steelworks’ closure, she explains, once vegetation had begun to reclaim it. Contaminated soil was replaced with clean local soil – at a depth between 0.5 and 1.5 metres, in line with Chinese regulations. The removed soil was sent to specialised facilities for purification, while severely contaminated layers were sealed with concrete. TLS proposed phytoremediation (using plants to detoxify soil) in selected areas of the site ‘as a symbolic and educational gesture’, Chen explains, but ‘the client preferred to be cautious’. From the eastern end of the park, hiking trails lead to the mountain and its Buddhist temples. The old steel mill’s grounds fade seamlessly into the hills. Standing in what it is still a construction site, a sign suggests there will soon be a rowing centre here.  While Jiakun Architects and TLS have prioritised making the site palatable as a public space, the project also brings to life a history that many are likely to have forgotten. Throughout, the park incorporates different elements of China’s economic history, including the life of the Grand Canal and the industrial era. There is, for example, a Maoist steelworker painted on the mural of one of the cafés, as well as historical photographs and drawings of the steelworks peppering the site, framed and hung on the walls. The ambition might be in part to pay homage to steelworkers, but it is hard to imagine them visiting. Gongshu, like the other suburbs of Hangzhou, has seen rapid increases in its property prices.  The steelworks were built during the Maoist era, a time of ‘battling with earth, battling with heaven, battling with humanity’, to borrow Mao’s own words. Ordinary people melted down pots and pans to surpass the UK in steel production, and industry was seen as a sharp break from a traditional Chinese way of life, in which humans aspire to live in harmony with their environment. The priorities of the government today are more conservative, seeking to create a garden city to attract engineers and their families. Hangzhou has long represented the balmy and sophisticated life of China’s south, a land of rice and fish. To the west of the city, not far from the old steelworks, are the ecologically protected Xixi wetlands, and Hangzhou’s urban planning exemplifies the Chinese principle of 天人合一, or nature and humankind as one.  Today, Hangzhou is only 45 minutes from Shanghai by high‑speed train. The two cities feel like extensions of one another, an urban region of 100 million people. The creation of the Grand Canal Steelworks Park reflects the move away from heavy industry that Chinese cities such as Hangzhou are currently making, shifting towards a supposedly cleaner knowledge‑driven economy. Yet the preservation of the steelworks epitomises the sentimental attitude towards the site’s history and acts as a reminder that today’s middle classes are the children of yesterday’s steelworkers, drinking coffee and playing with their own children in grassy lawns next to shuttered blast furnaces.  The park’s second phase is already nearing completion, and the competition for the nearby Grand Canal Museum was won by Herzog & de Meuron in 2020 – the building is under construction, and should open at the end of this year. It is a district rich in history, but the city is resolutely turned towards the future.  2025-06-02 Reuben J Brown Share AR May 2025CircularityBuy Now

Several Unitree G1 robots remotely operated by human beings punched, kicked and kneed one another in a fight to the top.

The humanoid robots are fighting.   Image: Unitree Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. After decades of being tortured, shoved, kicked, burned, and bludgeoned, robots are finally getting their chance to fight back. Sort of.  This weekend, Chinese robotics maker Unitree says it will livestream the world’s first boxing match between two of its humanoid robots. The event, titled Unitree Iron Fist King: Awakening, will feature a face-off between two of Unitree’s 4.3-foot-tall G1 robots. The robots will reportedly be remotely controlled by human engineers, though they are also expected to demonstrate some autonomous, pre-programmed actions as well. Earlier this week, the two robots previewed some of their moves at an elementary school in Hangzhou, China. Video released by Unitree earlier this month shows the robots, boxing gloves strapped on, “training” with their human coaches. The petite robots throw a few hooks with their arms before being pushed to the ground. One quickly gets back up and, after briefly struggling to face the right direction, spins around and delivers a straight kick, 300-style. Unitree claims its robots use a motion-capture training system that helps them learn from past mistakes and improve over time. The training video also shows the two robots briefly sparring with each other. The clacking sound of steel fills the room as they exchange a flurry of punches. At one point, both simultaneously deliver knee kicks to each other’s groin area, sending the robot in blue gear tumbling to the ground. “The robot is actively learning even more here skills,” the company notes in a caption towards the end of the video.  Humans have a long history of forcing robots to fight  The human tendency to force robots to fight for our amusement isn’t entirely new. The show Battle Bots, which dates back to the late 1990s revolved around engineers creating and designing remote-controlled robots, often armed to the teeth with electric saws and flamethrowers, and forcing them to duke it out. Many, many robots were reduced to scrap metal over the show’s 12 seasons.  Since then, engineers around the world have been experimenting with new ways to teach bipedal, humanoid robots how to throw punches and land kicks without stumbling or falling. Sometimes these machines are remotely controlled by human operators. In other cases, semi-autonomous robots have learned to “mirror” physical movements observed in humans. More advanced autonomous robots, like those being developed by Boston Dynamics and Figure, can move around their environment and perform pre-programmed actions. Neither of those companies, it’s worth noting, have announced any plans to make their robots fight.  China is quickly becoming a center stage for public displays of humanoid robot athletic competition. Last month, more than 20 robotics companies entered their robots into a half-marathon race in Beijing, where they competed against each other and human runners. The results were underwhelming. Media reports from the event claimed many of the machines failed to make it past the starting line. Others veered off course, with one reportedly even crashing into a barrier. The first robot to cross the finish line—a machine designed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center—did so nearly an hour and forty minutes after the first human completed the race. Only six robots finished.

It’s so uncanny how culture eventually shapes the technology around us. Self-driving tech made in the USA would NEVER work in the global south or countries like India – it wouldn’t anticipate street animals or local vehicles. Similarly, tech developed for and from countries like China might be fairly global, but I did notice a big difference at the BEYOND Expo this year – an absolute multitude of humanoid robots. To be fair, this isn’t my first China expo; I visited Shanghai for CES Asia (when it was still a thing), and noticed the exact same pattern there too. While I speculate the West generally fears robots and the power they hold over humanity (look at every bit of pop culture, from Terminator to Love, Death, and Robots), the East doesn’t hold such reservations. In countries like China, Japan, and South Korea, humanoid robots thrive, working as concierges, assistants, and even talented parts of the workforce (we even saw robot musicians). So it got me asking myself – why is China obsessed with Humanoid Robots? Eyevolution’s team is committed to implanting eyes and brains into robots, creating bionic beings This East/West divergence isn’t merely aesthetic; it’s deeply cultural. In the West, robots often symbolize existential threats. From Skynet’s apocalyptic AI in “Terminator” to Ultron’s malevolent intelligence in “Avengers,” robots are frequently portrayed as harbingers of doom. Even the Decepticons in “Transformers” embody this fear. Conversely, Eastern narratives, particularly in China and Japan, depict robots as allies. Astro Boy, created by Osamu Tezuka, is a benevolent android hero. Gundams are piloted protectors, not autonomous threats. These stories foster a perception of robots as companions and protectors. However, that’s just my theory. A demo robot from SenseTime At the 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing, over 27 different models were unveiled, showcasing the country’s commitment to leading in this sector. Officials emphasize that these robots are designed to assist, not replace, human workers, aiming to enhance productivity and undertake tasks in hazardous environments. This approach aligns with the cultural narrative of robots as helpers and protectors. This cultural lens influences real-world applications. China’s government actively promotes humanoid robotics. At the X-Humanoid innovation center in Beijing, officials emphasized that these robots aim to assist, not replace, human workers. They are designed for tasks humans find hazardous or undesirable, such as deep-sea exploration or space missions. A humaoid robot from Noetix Unitree’s G1 humanoid bot Demographics also play a role. China faces a rapidly aging population, with the number of people over 65 increasing significantly. To address the impending caregiver shortage, the government is integrating humanoid robots into eldercare. These robots can provide companionship, monitor health, and assist with daily activities, offering a solution to the demographic challenge. Eastern philosophies and religions, such as Buddhism and Taoism, often emphasize harmony between humans and their environment, including technology. This perspective supports the integration of robots into society as harmonious entities rather than disruptive forces. The concept of techno-animism, where technology is imbued with spiritual essence, further explains the comfort with humanoid robots in Eastern cultures. The AlphaBot 2 is touted as a ‘real world AGI robot’ Noetix Hobbs mimicking human expressions That philosophical outlook ends up shaping how China makes its humanoid robots. Below is Huawei’s FusionCube Chat Bot, a fun robot designed to assist and answer questions. Unitree’s G1 robot retails for $16,000 and is used in elder-care, having the robot perform human activities that the owner is too old to do or physically incapable of doing. On the other hand, some robots are made for special activities, like the Hobbs from Noetix, designed to expertly mimic human expressions – something that works great in human-like applications but also in movies and entertainment. Huawei FusionCube ChatBot The result is a society where humanoid robots are not only accepted but celebrated. At the Spring Festival Gala, robots performed traditional dances alongside humans, symbolizing this integration. In marathons, humanoid robots run alongside human participants, showcasing their capabilities and societal acceptance. China’s approach to humanoid robotics is a confluence of cultural narratives, governmental support, demographic necessity, and philosophical harmony. This multifaceted embrace positions China at the forefront of humanoid robot integration, offering a distinct contrast to Western apprehensions. Hexuan’s robots can play music with the same dexterity as a human The post Why is China Obsessed with Humanoid Robots? first appeared on Yanko Design.