Chinese humanoid factory video plunges back into the uncanny valley

A 20-second video from inside a Chinese humanoid robot factory is causing some consternation today around social media. It shows a range of highly realistic-looking, partially skinned humanoids under construction.

The video, uploaded by user ‘meimei4515,’ is uncredited, but shows several moving androids with human-like hair and skin – in stark contrast to most of the general-purpose humanoids we’d normally cover, which are designed to look like robots, rather than trying to fool anyone.

Here, there are rows of pretty cyborg-ladies, disembodied heads on stands, fully human-like presenter types wearing shirts and pants, and a surreal tree of humanoid arms, flexing and twirling their white-fingered hands in concert. It looks for all the world like a grittier version of Westworld’s backstage workshop.

@meimei4515 China uda buat robot manusia #china#robot ♬ suara asli – Amei 啊美

Whoever took the video says something in Chinese at the beginning, which translates roughly to “before that, the employees had already started mass production.”

So what are we actually looking at here? As it turns out, the arm-tree is the giveaway. Chinese company ExRobots has shown it before in expo displays. According to the company’s (translated) website, it builds “efficient and friendly smart guide services for government agencies, medical institutions and service retail industries.”

To show off its wares, ExRobots runs an ‘Ex Future Science and Technology Museum‘ in the city of Dalian, which looks to us somewhat like a robotic version of Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, with Einstein and Edison among the animatronic characters on site. There’s certainly no shame here about leaning into fleshy titillation – extra care has clearly been put into the boobular fembots, down to the goosebumps on their silicone leg skin.

ExRobots

The museum allows visitors to ‘drive’ a humanoid head with their own facial expressions using motion capture, and there’s a rotating dais you can stand on for three minutes to be 3D-scanned, after which there may be some sort of facility to have body parts 3D-printed, as shown in the following video from China Global Television Network – the idea is to demonstrate the company’s ability to produce custom animatronic mascots and presenters for corporate clients.

So no, dear dribbling hordes of social media commenters, you’re not looking at your new AI girlfriends. You’re also not looking at a company here that seems interested in useful humanoids. You’re looking at an advanced animatronics operation. The video is attention-grabbing because this is a company designed to grab attention. There’s not much meat in this sandwich.

But the humanoid space in general is absolutely teaming with meaty sandwiches in mid-2024. This is a breakout year for general-purpose AI-powered robotic workers, and Chinese companies such as Unitree, UBTech/Baidu, Astribot, LimX, Kepler, the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center and others are making genuine strides toward robot laborers capable of learning and executing useful tasks.

Indeed, China doesn’t seem to be lagging far behind North American companies like Tesla, Figure, Sanctuary, Agility, Apptronik and others. And we’re very much looking forward to learning more about what the grandaddy of this field – Boston Dynamics – is cooking up with its next-generation Atlas robot, which ditches its highly athletic predecessor’s hydraulic motors for electric actuators – and moves like no other humanoid we’ve ever seen.

So don’t get distracted by sexy viral videos – or do, I guess, if that’s your bag – but the humanoid revolution is truly kicking into second gear in 2024, and in conjunction with AI, it promises to fundamentally change human society like few technologies before it.

Source: ExRobots