Comment by WXLCKNO
2 days ago
I had never heard of Unitree (Chinese robotics company) before today. A lot of their videos look like CGI but apparently the product is real.
What stuck with me the most browsing their website on the G1 model was seeing "Price from $16k"
Now I'm not sure if these are actually purchasable or what the value would be, but it's my first time seeing an actual normal-ish price attached to a humanoid robot that seems to be for sale.
With the rate of advancement we're seeing across the board, it honestly feels like people will have robot assistants at home much sooner than I thought.
>A lot of their videos look like CGI but apparently the product is real.
I bought their robot dog as part of a project to build embodied AI models back in 2022.
Their SDK was far more open than anything else on the market and the stock firmware was on par with competitors, this includes products that were x10 the price.
The robot itself scared dogs in the park, but kids loved it. At $3k it's on par with a mid range drone and quite fun to hack on.
Same price as some pure bred dogs too
Take any of these videos with a grain of salt.
In demos these robots only need to do well once and it can take hours to record.
In real life, a failure rate of 80% is unnacceptable, but perfectly fine to edit out in the final cut media.
I hope they do well, this area is incredibly hard, but it will take a lot more than what people imagine.
I just want the consumer grade robot dog so I can program it to chase the roomba around.
This whole hype cycle man. It's all shiny demos and no real products.
I'm really shocked tbh.
I can't imagine the progression of ai and in particular robots but I assumed that the first robot would cost min 6 figures if not 7 but would still be worth it due to 24*7 and initial invest vs long term.
But the fact how good Gemini robotics is already and how cheap the first models are I do believe what will hinder us more than tech is people learning about it, testing it out and doing it but not technology.
I believe the world will look relevant different in 10 years.
The humanoid is $20k-ish without hands. Each hand currently costs another $20k (and not sure if these are available to everyone or only for research).
Their robots are real enough, and they are well designed.
You can see more details in this video "Tearing Down the Unitree Go2: A Robotics Expert's Deep Dive":
https://youtu.be/YjVbW6Fc11Y
TBH, I still wonder if some of their videos are CGI. They offer real versions for sale, but they seem to be significantly more limited than the videos imply.
Have they actually demonstrated the more dramatic stuff at any in-person demos?
It is funny that this is getting downvoted. AFAICT, the answer to my question is actually "no". :)