To mark the “first mass delivery” of its Walker S2 Humanoid Robots, Chinese manufacturer UBTECH posted a spectacular  video of its "Robot Army" on YouTube. Watch and be amazed.

The video opens with robots marching in step along a corridor. Then a huge door opens onto a vast hall filled with row upon row, column upon column of robots moving in unison. They reach behind themselves and perform a battery swap prior to marching off and into shipping containers, apparently ready for transportation. 

To get the full, chilling, effect, make sure you have the sound turned on for the warlike impression of hundreds of metal feet - something out of Terminator.

If, like me, you are looking forward to having a robot companion who can do all the household chores, prepare tasty meals and let me win at chess at least one in four games, this will turn your cosy dream into a chilling nightmare.

The video is awesome - and for me at least unsettling. Is it real? I rather doubt that so many resources would have been dedicated to a promo video and tend to agree with Brett Adcock,  CEO of the competing robotics company, Figure AI, who points out how the reflections of the ceiling lights reveal the use of CGI.

And, of course, you wouldn't ship precious robots fully assembled and standing up. The reality involves sturdy crates and a great deal of packaging. 

Fake and unrealistic video aside, Ubtech's second generation humanoid robot S2 being ready to ship and going into mass production is an important advance.

UB Tech's Walker S2 is an industrial-class robot. Its predecessor S1 model has already been tested by  prominent Chinese automotive companies including  NIO, BYD and Zeekr and now the Shenzhen company is starting to fulfill two large orders having made a 250 million yuan deal in September and another for 159 million yuan more recently. 

The Walker S2 is approximately 1.76 meters tall and weighs around 43 kg. It can move up to two metres per second (7.2 km/h) and it 52 degrees of freedom enable complex motion and dexterity. It has a maximum payload of 15 kg and a special feature is its ability to swap its own batteries for near 24/7 operation.

The UBTech Walker S2's humanoid design is a deliberate choice for efficiency and versatility in environments already structured for people. Existing industrial spaces, factories, and warehouses are built to human scale, with standard doorways, staircases, machinery controls, and workstations. Humanoid form allows robots to operate seamlessly in these existing environments without extensive and costly infrastructure reconfiguration. Having dexterous hands (11-12 DOF per hand), the Walker S2 can use human-oriented tools (like screwdrivers or quality inspection devices) and manipulate objects on assembly lines, allowing it to perform tasks previously exclusive to human workers and its bipedal locomotion (walking) allows it to navigate various factory terrains and obstacles, walk through narrow corridors, and reach areas that wheeled or tracked robots cannot.

Its estimated price is US $65,000 - $100,000 for early access and small run. The price tag is expected to decrease with mass production.

Compared to other humanoid robots like Boston Dynamics’ Atlas or Agility Robotics’ Digit, the Walker S2 prioritises payload capacity, human-environment compatibility and continuous operation via hot-swapping batteries. While Atlas emphasizes extreme mobility and acrobatics, and Digit focuses on logistics tasks like box handling, Walker S2 targets industrial deployment with human-like reach and sustained uptime. It also possesses both perception and intelligence.  Dual-RGB stereo vision cameras provide binocular depth perception coupled with a force-feedback joint network to enable environment sensing and dynamic stabilization. For task planning, exception handling and autonomous decision-making it relies on UBTech’s proprietary AI stack comprising Co-Agent and BrainNet. While the current specifications do not mention speech recognition or conversational ability, this is surely the next step. 

In fact it is probably the next step in AI. Most experts are of the opinion that it is world models and embodied AI that will eventually result in AGI. Humanoid robots are the most appropriate bodies to put nascent AGI into. Lower costs are essential to building up the necessary experience and to allow for unproductive time while the robots are just learning.

We are all aware that the needs of AI is currently driving the GPU boom. We are about to discover that AI needs humanoid robots, rather than the other way round.

More Information

UBTECH Signals Walker S2 Mass Delivery with ''Robot Army'' Video

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