CES is always a robotics extravaganza, and this year’s event announced some important robotics developments, including new, production-ready ones. debut from Atlashumanoids from Boston Dynamics. Then there are all the robots on the showroom floor, where bots are often great marketing for the companies involved. If they do not always give a completely accurate representation of where the current commercial deployment is, they give visitors a glimpse of where it can lead. And, of course, they are always fun to look at. I spent a decent amount of time perusing bots on display this week. Here are some of the most memorable ones I found.
Ping pong player
Puppet Great Marty it’s only been out for a month, so it’s only fitting that there’s a ping-pong robot at this year’s convention. Chinese the Sharpa robotics company has rigged up a full bot to play some competitive table tennis against one of the firm’s staff. When I stopped by Booth Sharpa, this robot lost to human competitors, 5-9, and I would not characterize the game that happened as particularly fast-paced. Still, the spectacle of seeing a robot play ping pong is quite impressive in itself, and I’m sure I’ve known some humans whose paddle skills were basically the same as (or slightly worse than) the bot. A Sharpa rep told me that the company’s main product is a robotic hand, and a full-bodied bot has debuted at CES to demonstrate hand dexterity.
Boxer
One of the exhibits that drew huge crowds was a robot from a Chinese company EngineAIwho developed humanoid robots. The bot, dubbed T800 (a nod to the Terminator franchise), was in a mock boxing ring and styled as a fighting machine. That said, I’ve never seen any bots actually hit. However, they will sort out the shadowbox near each other, never really make contact. They are also a little unpredictable. One continues out of the ring and into the audience, which is sure to rise from the audience. Another time, one of the bots fell on its own feet and landed on the floor, where it spent some time before deciding to get up again. So, it’s not exactly a Mike Tyson situation, but the machine can still evoke the spooky kind of humanoid behavior that makes for quality entertainment. I heard an observer’s voice: “This is a lot like Robocop.”
Dancer
Dancing robots have long been a staple at CES, and this year is no different. This year, the dance movement torch is carried by bots from Unitree, a Chinese robotics manufacturer that has been examined for potential ties with the Chinese military. Unitree has made some impressive announcements about its product base, including a humanoid bot that is supposed to work running at speeds up to 11 mph. I didn’t see any evidence of anything malicious at Unitree’s booth this week—just a lot of bots that felt the groove.
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Store clerk
I stopped by the booth for Galbot, another Chinese company that says it focuses on multi-modal large base models and general purpose robots. The Galbot booth has been laid out like a store, and the bot appears to have been synced with the menu app. Customers will come to the booth, choose an item from the menu, and then the bot will pick up the selected merchandise for them. After I selected Sour Patch Kids, the bot carefully took a box off the shelf for me. According to the company’s website, the robot has been deployed in several real-world settings, including as an assistant. in a Chinese pharmacy.
Housekeeper
Creating a machine that can do laundry has long been one of the core ambitions of the commercial robotics community. The ability to take a T-shirt and participate is considered basic test of automatic competence. Therefore, I was quite impressed by the display at Dyna Robotics, a company that develops advanced manipulation models for automated tasks. There, a pair of robotic arms can be seen efficiently wrapping laundry and placing it in a pile. A representative of Dyna told us that the company has established partnerships with several hotels, gyms, and factories.
One of the businesses, the rep told me, is Monster Laundrybased in Sacramento, California. Monster incorporated a Dyna shirt-folding robot into its operations late last year and now describes itself as “the first laundry center in North America to debut Dyna’s advanced robotic folding system.”
Dyna also has some impressive backing. It ended up being $120 million Series A fundraising round in September that included funding from Nvidia’s NVentures, as well as from Amazon, LG, Salesforce, and Samsung.
Caretaker
I also stopped by the LG CES section for a look at its new home robot, CLOid. It’s cute but not the fastest bot on the block. You can read our full review of the experience here here.