There doesn’t seem to be a week that goes by without a new humanoid robot being announced in China.
The latest contraption to step into the limelight is LimX Dynamics’ Oli, a humanoid robot that, according to a video featuring the bipedal bot, can do just about anything.
The three-minute video shows a typical day in the life of Oli, which in some moments seems to be more human than robot.
The footage starts with Oli doing weights in a gym, which is a bit odd considering it’s a machine without any actual muscles to speak of. But LimX sees it as a good setting for showing off some of the robot’s versatility.
Oli the humanoid robot then shows up for a kung fu session in a nearby park. Sparring with a human, Oli is kind enough not to deck the senior citizen, and the two participants depart amicably.
At 9 a.m. the robot strolls into the LimX factory that’s already filled with humans working diligently — though for how much longer we can’t be sure. In another demonstration of its abilities, Oli is shown lifting some boxes and placing them into a wheel-based autonomous assistant. After that, LimX’s new creation performs a sorting task using a gripper for hands. It’s pretty good, though a bit slow, which is why the video hits double speed for this part.
Next, Oli turns up in the office. One of its human colleagues decides to kick him in the back, apparently because she’s annoyed that Oli’s leaving early. Demonstrating remarkable stability and balance, the robot stays upright and continues calmly on its way, seemingly content to let the earlier physical assault slide.
Nine o’clock in the evening is, apparently, “dancing time,” and Oli is shown pulling some moves that are only marginally more impressive than what Elon Musk managed when he opened a Tesla plant in Shanghai a few years back.
Notably, Oli features a modular design where parts can be easily swapped out to suit particular tasks. For example, the gripper can be changed for a hand featuring five robot fingers, which would give it more control over intricate sorting tasks. Its modular design also means it can be fitted with third-party cameras, microphones, cameras, sensors, and other peripherals.
The robot is also described as a general-purpose humanoid platform with advanced autonomy features intended for embodied AI research, developer integration, and complex, real-world robot applications.
Overall, Oli’s performance is very impressive, with the 165-cm, 55-kg autonomous robot clearly already at an advanced stage of development.
LimX’s new humanoid robot is available in China for about $22,000, with an international version expected soon.
Alongside China, the U.S. is also investing heavily in humanoid robot designs. Just last week, we got a glimpse of how Figure’s robot is coming along, while Amazon, Tesla, Boston Dynamics, and Apptronik are also known to be developing similar robots.
