Podcast: Humanoid Robots Can Now Punch... What's Next?

In this episode, we explore the engineering behind Unitree’s newest boxing robot demo, the history of humanoid robots, and why robotics might create a new F1-esque sport in the combat sports realm.

This podcast is sponsored by Mouser Electronics. 

Episode Notes

(03:30) Unitree’s Boxing Robots

(05:25) The Evolution of Humanoid Robotics

(11:34) Technical Implications and Safety Concerns

(16:09) The Future of Robot Sports and Entertainment

This episode was brought to you by Mouser, our go-to source for electronics parts for any hobby or prototype. Click HERE to see how Mouser’s combat robot wins fights through smart design, not brute force.

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Transcript

Unitree, the company known for their agile robot dogs, is now pushing the boundaries a little bit, pushing their humanoids into more aggressive motion. Most humanoid robot demonstrations right now have been sticking to walking, light tasks, or even parkour. But now Unitree is showing us their robots boxing.

What's up friends, this is The Next Byte Podcast where one gentleman and one scholar explore the secret sauce behind cool tech and make it easy to understand.

Daniel: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Next Byte. On today's podcast, we're talking all about real steel, but in real life. Before we jump into the specific topic we're talking about today with Unitree’s Boxing Robots, let's take a zoom out and talk about one of the precursors to this new generation of BattleBots, which is BattleBots. I don't know if you ever spent time watching BattleBots on TV or have rewatched stuff on YouTube, but it's one of the things that got me most excited in robotics to begin with for sure.

Farbod: For me, it was real steel. I have not seen BattleBots, but real steel really scratched the interest of robotics for me when I was a kid.

Daniel: Yeah, well, I used to be part of robotics teams in middle school and high school. And it was always about, oh, can you put this ball in this hoop? Or can you move these packages from this location to another? Not quite the same as, oh, can you kill the other robot in the ring? So that you can see the natural continuation of, oh, this is so cool. We're linking an episode from today or an article rather from today's sponsor today's episode Mouser Electronics. They're one of the world's largest electronics distributors. They're well connected with industry, academia experts. They write cool technical resources on things that are going on. I didn't know this. They're also connected to BattleBots teams. They're one of the sole sponsors of a BattleBots team called HugeBot. And this is what the article is written about is kind of the design and performance of HugeBot. And one of the interesting things about it is I've always loved the battle bots that perform well because of creative design, not just because of brute force. So, there's sometimes that people like make flamethrowers or they make just really, really strong, like literal circular saws that like cut through your robot. HugeBot survives not because of brute force, but because of being huge. And it's got a really, really tall profile with huge wheels that keep the core of the robot out of reach. And it's got really flexible wheels that absorb hits. So, it basically elevates all the critical hardware out of the realm of attack of other bots, which is pretty interesting, pretty cool. They talk about the design, the materials in that, and also the electronics. One of the most important or cool things for me in all this is they have fully independent and redundant electronics. So that if you have one point of the electronics fail from a brutal impact, that the rest of the robot can keep going, which is pretty cool. As a robotics geek, this is really, really exciting for me. And it's also, you'll see just how, but you'll see how it's pretty well related to what we want to talk about today. So, you should check out that article in the show notes and learn more about HugeBot.

Farbod: I'm going to check it out. Yeah, I didn't know they sponsored a team. That's sick.

Daniel: Yeah, it's pretty sick.

Farbod: And you did a good job of selling them.

Daniel: You know, it's genuine passion, right?

Farbod: I could tell.

Daniel: On to today's, the meat and potatoes of today's episode, which is Unitree, the robotics company, long known for doing quadrupeds. They've also done humanoids. They've showed off their latest demo of their new large H2 humanoid. And I think their smaller H1 humanoid as well. And it's a boxing demo. And it shows this humanoid throwing real punches, kicking knee strikes at a smaller robot, and then also sparring, like kicking water bottles up on a post and trying to explode them. And then also sparring with a human, which is crazy. I'm going to, this is a new thing for the podcast. I'm going to try sharing my screen and see if this works. I can't emphasize enough that if you're listening to the audio only that you need to go check this out and see this robot fighting because it is insane.

Farbod: We need a third person on the podcast that we can ask to pull up videos for us, just like Joe Rogan and Jamie.

Daniel: It's crazy. And yeah, we do need we needed Jamie to help us pull stuff up. But I mean, really, really insane. Humanoids punching other humanoids, kicking other humanoids. The opening scene of this fight is the larger humanoid kneeing the smaller humanoid and then the chest plate of that smaller humanoid comes off. Pretty crazy, pretty exciting. Obviously, there's some eye candy there and that's definitely what drew us to cover this topic. But there's also some real technical implications about it too, which we want to talk about. And Farbod, I think you also did a deep dive on the history of these type of robotics too, which would be interesting to walk our way through.

Farbod: Yeah, we took a different approach on tackling this, I think is perfect, because you went into the technical depth and I just, I wanted to understand how we got here because it felt like, you know, I graduated in high school in 2015, graduated college in 2019. It was like end of my senior year, let's say to end of my college senior year, where like robotics seemed to be at the peak. We got the Spot robot from Boston Dynamics doing the Bruno Mars dance. And then it feels like overnight humanoid robots just became incredibly advanced. So, I wanted to understand why, how, whatever, what this trend has looked like, and if I'm just crazy and this has been just happening in the background all these years. So, with that in mind, I'm gonna take us back to 1495. The man himself, Da Vinci, was the actual first known inventor of a humanoid robot with his knight robot. So, he took a knight's armor. And on the inside, he used gears and other mechanicals to emulate a knight walking and moving their arms and such. So super simple, nothing crazy, no vision systems, of that. Just cranking it out. Then we jump 250 years. We're looking at 1737 now. And I'm going to butcher his last name, even though I YouTube'd it beforehand. It's Jacques de Vaucanson and his automatons. So, if you've never seen these, this is something else. I would recommend you look up Mechanical engineering Marvel something like 9,000 moving pieces and his automatons there was one that could write letters. So, it would take a pencil It would write four different types of letters or draw pictures depending on how you lined up the gears and it could even blow on what it was writing to blow away the scraps from the lead of the pencil.

Daniel: Insane.

Farbod: Insane. Just the things they were able to accomplish with limited resources.

Daniel: Also, pardon for both French there.

Farbod: Yes. Yes, pardon my French. Love that. Then we jump to the 1970s. So, this is now getting into 20th century, know, modern world. And we get Waseda University from Japan, and they're a WABOT-1. So, this is the first generally recognized full-scale humanoid robot where it's walking, it has sensors. It's still attached to a harness, but it is doing the feat of bipedal walking, which is just like a human being. Then we jump 14 years into the future to the WABOT-2, and this one is actually playing the piano. It has dexterous hands. It can perceive what keys it should be pressing. It can coordinate itself. So very, very impressive feat. Then we jump another 16 years into the future to the year 2000, and I think this is where most of our listeners might resonate with the technology, this is the Honda.

Daniel: This is my core memory of human robots.

Farbod: Yeah, same. Because it's the one that we saw everywhere. And it's the Honda Asimo, the cute little robot that Honda unveiled. Playing soccer, shaking hands, walking, it just all seemed like the future is now. And then we pretty much had nothing until 2013 with the DARPA Atlas. So, where the Atlas innovated was on creating a system, a humanoid, that could walk and stuff like ASIMO mostly, but this one was very rugged. So, you could kind of beat on it and it could take it and it could keep going. DARPA being a US military initiative research arm, naturally that's something they'll be interested in, in rugged robotics. Then again, almost hearing nothing until 2021, which is when we get Engineered Arts Ameca. Ameca innovated on a different front. It was on the human and robot interaction, showing emotions, making it not harm people as it's maneuvering stuff. But then the Boston Dynamics team killed it this same year with the Atlas parkour video. So, this is the one that took the world by storm because you had the Atlas doing this obstacle course, doing flips, doing rolls.

Daniel: Yeah, the back flip.

Farbod: Yeah, doing the cross jumps on what looks like a, what's those? What is it? The Warrior obstacle courses?

Daniel: Ninja Warrior.

Farbod: Ninja Warrior, yeah. There we go. So that's the one that I remember the most because I had just graduated college and everyone was like, the world's gonna end. These things are gonna like kill us all. And then had another group that was like, this is fantastic. I can't wait to have one that can help me around. And then 2023 is when Unitree came out with their first version, the H1. And the H1 obviously wasn't the first humanoid robot ever, but it came in at a very reasonable price point for a lot of researchers and the most critical piece of it all, it was incredibly open source. So, they opened the data sets, the models, everything up to the community of researchers and basically told them to go nuts. And then this is kind of where we're at today with the H2 and the G1. And the G1, you haven't seen, I think that's like one of the more affordable versions they have. That's the go-to for a lot of robotic scientists. Like Daniel said we have the H1 and the H2 fighting each other. There's videos of the H2 fighting with people. There's people, Sentdex, I don't know if you're familiar with them Daniel. He's one of my favorite content creators. This guy taught himself programming, taught himself AI. Bought a barn, does ton of robotics research and the robotics community like super highly regarded. He's experimenting with how to use humanoid robots to do things that are not the norm for a human, like bending your appendices in different ways to walk faster, kind like a horror movie. But it's absolutely fascinating and all of this is being done on the Unitree platforms.

Daniel: I think I have seen some of these videos.

Farbod: Yeah, it's pretty sick. So that's where we're at today. Figured the audience might enjoy the history just as much as I did, but it's cool to see how much of this insanity has happened, let's say, in the last 10 years.

Daniel: Well, and to then contrast where we've came from to where we are today, to see this demonstration, it's actually quite complex. Right? So, it's highly likely that they're using human motion, human motion capture to drive these robots movements, maybe using VR/AR with the human controller to tele-operate the robots and do these boxing demonstrations. But to be able to respond to that live feedback, but then also have some other autonomous systems like balance control to absorb recoil and to keep it up right after strikes. This is really, really complex. And a lot of these robot demonstrations we've seen are not with something else that's exerting force on it. It's interacting with stationary objects like a Boston Dynamics robot hopping from box to box to box is exciting, but the boxes aren't moving and the boxes aren't punching back. This is something where it's like pretty interesting to watch this robot be able to like use its balance control to absorb a hit, stay upright and then be ready to strike back. Pretty interesting.  I immediately go to like, what the heck are we doing with safety? Like, why are we training robots to be able to beat each other up? Because what happens if someone takes the uh guard rails off and it decides it wants to turn around and punch the human operator? The robots are really, really strong. They have super high torque joints. They have superhuman degrees of freedom. Like, what happens if a robot this strong goes rogue or even just misfires, like the person controlling it accidentally punches the human harder than you think they are like during the sparring exercise like what are the moral implications of this? These are rhetorical questions. I don't have the answers to them. But it is interesting to see this technology advanced to the point where like maybe in 2000 someone would see Asimo from Honda and be like all the world's over like these things are gonna kill us. You could actually defeat Asimo in a fight pretty easily. But you're starting to get to a point where I'm seeing Unitree H2 and I'm like, I don't know if I could beat that in a fight, which is like, it's exciting. It's cool to see technology progress to this point. It's also a little bit scary. It provokes, provokes a lot of thought. Some intellectual, some existential, but yeah, provokes a lot of thought.

Farbod: I think that's always the challenge with new technologies, right? Like, obviously we want to see progress. Obviously, we see the value add in our lives of something that is as capable as a human, if not more, but how do we preach this to the innovators to balance the impact to humanity as well? And I think I'm always on the pro-open source side of things, and this is where I'll play devil's advocate against myself. By opening up the Pandora's box, you've opened up the Pandora's box, right? Like anyone with a couple thousand dollars, which still a lot of money, but not for someone that is doing robotics research. Anyone with a couple thousand bucks can set these things up and they're not super fine tuned yet, but over the next couple of years, definitely getting there. They're going to be able to run Open Zone software and then do whatever they want.

Daniel: Another example of this, I'm going to go to sharing my screen again. Hopefully this works.

Farbod: If not, it's just for you and me.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly. It’s REK Robotics. Have you heard of REC?

Farbod: I have not.

Daniel: Okay, so it's R-E-K, REK.com.

Farbod: Oh my God, is it Robot MMA?

Daniel: This is VR boxing. So, there's two human operators on either end of this, but they're controlling Unitree H1 robots and fighting each other. So, there's this robot fight club in San Francisco called REK Robotics. And I had the awesome opportunity while I was visiting another friend's factory, it's in the same building, to see their headquarters. And it's insane. And so, you've got these robots fighting each other. This is cool, like the two of them retired after a fight. But this is on the Unitary platform. And if you look, they did a road show. They did like four fights, one in LA, one in Las Vegas, one in Austin, one in New York City during the month of November. All of those fights sold out. And so really what they're doing now is like robot fight club. They're taking it on the road. And I think they're, maybe it's not their company slogan, but it's on their X account for sure is like we're making real steel in real life. I think it's pretty cool. The main call to action on their website is asking people to come become VR fighters. So, pretty insane, pretty exciting. Just to show like the scale to which humanoid robotics have excelled. Boxing I also think of as like this is an Olympic sport. In China in August, they did a humanoid robot Olympics. And it included all sorts of sports, had over 280 teams representing 16 countries. They did obstacle courses. They were going through rough terrain. They were playing soccer with one another. They were racing on a track. They were boxing. Like this is the world where we are right now in the terms of humanoid robotics is like, oh, we're doing like real competitions that humans do. And some of these are like superhuman competitions. It's an awesome way for researchers to demonstrate the way they, you know, the capabilities of their robots right now. I also wonder if there's a point where like real steel ask, we all are fixated around a robot fighting ring more so than we are like humans boxing, which would be kind of crazy.

Farbod: I would be so down for that.

Daniel: I mean, just like I already watched battle bots on Discovery Channel growing up. Like this is, this is that. But the next level.

Farbod: And just think about how that could disrupt the entire world of sports, right? Like you can have e-sports getting into the world of real sports by essentially taking gamers that know the moves, but maybe don't have the physical capacity to get in the ring and fight someone, but now they're able to basically do that robot, I guess, robot.

Daniel: One of the things that compels me most about F1 as a sport is that there's definitely the human aspect. Like you have to have a good team principle who's a leader of a strong organization. And the team is a lot more than just the two drivers. There's also reserve drivers and test drivers, but then there's also the entire crew supporting them. I like the fusion of that human aspect of team sports, alongside with the engineering required to make this come to life. And there are F1 teams that beat other F1 teams purely based on the basis of engineering, which I think is like, as an engineer, I think it's pretty exciting. These like robotic humanoid robotic sports carry the same level of like, hey, it's like engineering that matters a lot and how these robots excel or fail in these different sports. I could definitely see myself and other engineers being early adopters to this and then maybe becoming mainstream kind of the way that F1 did over the last couple of years in the US.

Farbod: That's a perfect analogy. I love it men. What do you say we wrap up the episode?

Daniel: Yes, sir. Everyone knows Unitree, they've known for making affordable agile robot dogs. They're now at the point where they're pushing humanoids into more aggressive motion. When I say aggressive motion, they're punching, kicking, and knee striking each other. I think this is the beginning of what we'll see for lot of humanoid robots in demonstration and maybe in sports entertainment as well. This is an awesome show off of the capabilities that these robots have but it may also be the future of the way that we get entertainment and also a show for more than just a show here, right? Demonstrating how these robots are useful for areas like rescue, defense, or heavy handling.

Farbod: Love it.

Daniel: That's the pod.

Farbod: That's the pod.

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The Next Byte: We're two engineers on a mission to simplify complex science & technology, making it easy to understand. In each episode of our show, we dive into world-changing tech (such as AI, robotics, 3D printing, IoT, & much more), all while keeping it entertaining & engaging along the way.