The Humanoid Robot of the Future Is a 6-Foot-Tall Beefcake With a Chinese Body and an American Brain

A humanoid robot the future is a hulking model with a built-in body China it’s the brain that runs American Silicon.

This week, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, announced the bot plan, which includes several different things: a 6-foot, 150-pound robot called H2 Plus from Unitree, a high-tech robotics startup in China; Thor T5000 Nvidia chip; upper human arm; is a new software, which makes it easy to program and train the machine. Taken together, it will enable researchers, including US academic labs, to develop breakthroughs humanoids and train them with their own AI algorithms.

The Thor chip can run powerful forms of AI that allow the bot to sense its location and control its movements, while the body houses Unitree motors, actuators, and sensors. A smart, human-like hand from Singapore company Sharpa he can do anything from card tricks to apple peeling. (Stability is still a major unsolved problem in robotics.)

Spencer Huang, Nvidia’s head of robotics products, told WIRED that the company wants to provide silicon smarts to as many humanoid companies as possible. “Unitree is the first, but it won’t be the last,” Huang said. (Yes, he’s Jensen’s son.) He also said that the H2 technology could make other Chinese robots, including conventional industrial equipment, more capable.

In some ways, the deal is unexpected: Robotics has emerged as a critical arena in the US-China technology competition, and some politicians have reacted. they want to ban Chinese humanoids together. Last year, security researchers he said that Unitree robots can capture and transmit data, raising security risks.

But in some ways, the group-up makes perfect sense. “This is an interesting development,” said Scott Singer, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies AI governance and China. Singer says that while the US has the world’s most advanced AI chips, China’s supply chain gives its robotics industry a hardware edge. “Both sides have great areas where they can use weapons, but here they are working together,” he says.

Courtesy of NVIDIA

Nvidia, for its part, seems to be aware of security issues. Apart from the smart fingerprints and the new brain, the new H2 Plus plan comes with security features that seem to be designed to assure users that their data and models are safe.