Chinas Robots Are Becoming Too Advanced... (Engine AI)

in the world of Robotics there is a quiet but powerful company that is slowly Rising the ranks and gaining more and more attention that company is engine AI is a new pioneering company dedicated to developing Advanced humanoid robots and accelerating Innovation and embodied intelligence now this is a company that was founded only in October 20123 by Zha tongyang and the company has rapidly established itself as a leader in the robotics industry now

in July of 2024 engine AI launched its first bipedal robot the sa1 followed by the fullsize general purpose humanoid robot seo1 in October and these robots have taken the World by storm now these robots have essentially done something that no other robotics company was able to do they've managed to achieve a humanlike gate one of the largest struggles for robotics was the ability to have robots that walk like humans

often times many of the robots that we've seen robots like the Tesla bot and others included have had this problem and the problem was due to the fact that walking like a human is incredibly hard the only company that had managed to perform this successfully was Boston Dynamics and they are a company that is notably pretty much years ahead of many other humanoid robot companies so this was one of the biggest challenges in the robotics humanoid space that many people hadn't even tried to attempt because it was notably so hard so when this video came out right here this was the one that took the World by storm so this video that you're seeing was the video that they debuted on their YouTube channel and it really shook the World by storm in the sense that it was so good many individuals didn't even believe it was real we got to see the demo of this

robot walking exactly in the same motion that a human would and we also got the robot to do a variety of other small tasks like doing press UPS now I think this was something that definitely showed people that the robotic space is moving ahead but what really shocked people was that it was coming out of a smaller company from China and it was so shocking that many people didn't even believe the robot was real I remember when I made a video covering this breakthrough this was something that even the commenters didn't really believe take a look at this comment on the video it says nice 3D model Now where's the actual robot when you get to the point where you've managed to create a robot that even people who are seeing the robot for real the first time can't believe it's real I definitely think that you've broken some kind of incredible barrier that is truly different I mean if you have your robot and it's so good people are like wait this isn't even real it definitely means that you're operating on the field where there's a lot of innovation occurring and I think that's what engine AI have successfully managed to do now it wasn't just YouTube comments that were talking about this there were Reddit comments where users were highlighting the doubts about the realism of the robots movements some people can believe it was real some people were stating that it was CGI it was actually crazy because it got to the point where even individuals who are working in the space didn't actually believe it was real so Dr Jim

fan Nvidia senior research manager and co-founder of the gear lab and the leader of the project Groot which is solving General Robotics and physical AI at Nvidia this is a guy who's clearly very well accomplished he didn't even believe the video was real so take a look at what he tweeted he said hey everyone this was allegedly shot in senen is this real can someone verify I've seen this company posting very natural humanoid walking Gates a couple of months ago however these days it's quite hard to tell CGI versus Sora versus the real now this is the video that you are looking at in question I do understand where you are coming from if you see this and you think it's completely CGI considering we've never seen a humanoid robot walk like this before and it's just a company that managed to sort of Spawn out of nowhere with no real you know Publications before but just an incredible demo out of the gate it definitely is surprising and for the longer video you can see this one is in a little bit more quality but you can see that it doesn't look like CGI if you really do pay attention to the details here it looks like a really polished robot that has just managed to walk exactly how humans would and I think that is what is causing this to be as uncanny as it is and why it's throwing a many individuals off not just the average redditor but many accomplished individuals in the robotics field and of course this demo you can see that many individuals in public are also filming the robot and to their surprise it's working quite like a human wood now of course we now know that this footage is real but nvidia's Dr Jim fan says I verified from reliable sources the new visual T test this is a real robot demo

the controller is a newal net that was trained in nvidia's ISAC simulator using reinforcement learning and then Sim to real reward engineering is all you need so you can see that he verified that this was real and that's of course when the Wilder Community accepted that this robot was actually real and I think that this is something that is rather important because it goes to show you exactly how fast the space is moving so next was of course another company that managed to come out of the woodwork like I said before at this time there was no other robot that was actually walking like this which is why engine AI were stealing the show until this robot came along and that is of course the unitri G1 so this robot was really interesting because it was the only one that was second after the engine AI robot and it actually did a multitude of things it was able to run like a human and walk like a human was and of course able to do this over multiple different surfaces it was able to do this on a variety of different terrains and it basically went to show the progression that robotics had to offer now I do know that this is an engine AI video talking about their Innovative jumps and leaps in robot but it just goes to show that when one company shows that it is possible to achieve something other companies sort of realized that look if this is possible then we can do it too and they all start to invest in that same area now with this video there was a breakdown by Dr Jim fan and he spoke about how to reverse engineer this demo and I'm going to break this down for you guys in a very simple speak so that we don't lose track of what's important here so there are three key things that he actually talks about one of them

being the fact that good robot design is usually built for simulation so previously Engineers built robots and tried simulating them afterwards often as an afterthought but now simulation which is where you have that virtual test environment is so crucial that Engineers design robots specifically to perform well in simulations and if your robot doesn't perform well in simulation it's nearly impossible to train it effectively using AI methods now the second thing that they actually did here and this was super interesting was that they actually used human movement data so motion capture so robots become realistic by learning from actual human movements like walking or running and these movements are usually captured for movies or video games using sensors placed on axes and robots can use this data in three ways so first you can train the robot to copy the human movements first and then adapt those movements to match the robot's physical body then you can teach the robot to prefer humanlike movements by giving penalties wherever it moves differently then of course you can use the human movement as guidelines to basically limit what the robot can learn making sure it doesn't perform unrealistic actions now with all of this once you know you got the design down you've got the human movement data you basically need to have the powerful simulation like nvidia's ISAC Sim and add random variations so the robot can learn robustness train it using reinforcement learning and then the algorithm that they used I'm not going to get into it too much but they use something called po and basically you just run many different simulations the robot can adapt to many varied ones and so overall this is how they're able to get robots working like this and it's a clear breakthrough in terms of the software side because the hardware was done months and months ago and we're only now seeing what is capable so the crazy thing about all of this whether it's the unitary G1 or whether it is the engine AI robot is that a lot of these robots are still having upgrades so one

of the continued innovations that this company has managed to do was to be able to get the robot to perform a front flip now you might be thinking that is pretty normal but this is a Monumental milestone for the company and the humanoid robotics industry so this maneuver is actually notably more challenging than a backflip due to the complexities involved in forward rotation this requires precise balance rapid weight shifting and coordinated limb movements to ensure a controlled landing and the successful execution of this front trip actually shows that this company is destined for more and later on I'm going to show you that they continue to do more advancements now I'm guessing that the design which is lightweight and it has high performance components obviously enable the robot to do this so this also goes to show that their Hardware is also clearly very robust as it was able to do a front flip in a remarkably effective manner so this goes to show your Hardware is of course very important but the software as well is most certainly going to be even probably more important because it allows you to do things that you probably didn't even know you could do now of course some people may you know say that this doesn't offer any immediate practical applications but it does go to show the kinds of things that we can get these robots to do once they've been through certain simulations and once we've tested the actual physical limitations of the hardware so we can understand how far we can take

them now like I said continue Innovations are there recently we got to see the engine 01 robot actually outside running quite like a human wood and funnily enough it actually ran right past a jogger in this specific demo so once again they have used reinforcement learning to be able to get this robot that was trained in simulation to be able to effectively have the right gate as a human would and I'm pretty sure that this is probably more effective than other methods that we've seen humanoid robots run with so I think this once again is another continued Innovation because a lot of robots actually can't run that fast and I remember the time you know a few years ago which probably wasn't but I do remember watching a previous video of a unry H1 robot that was actually running in a way that was nowhere as nice as this so This goes to show you guys I mean if we take a look forward for the next 10 years the kinds of things robots going to be able to do and this is of course their first well second iteration of their robot and they've already got it running like a human so I do really do wonder where China is going to be in the next few years in terms of humanoid robots and some may argue that they are on track to surpass the US now with this humanoid robot running there's actually this article where there's going to be a half marathon held in the capital Dax Singh in April according to local authorities so as you may know China has actually ramped up efforts to develop Ai and Robotics to gain an edge in the tech rivalry with the United States and of

course to combat the challenges of an aging society and a falling birth rate and apparently there are going to be robots from more than 20 companies according to the administrative body of Beijing economic technological Development Area or E toown so this is going to be really incredible because For the First time we're going to see a bunch of different robots running so a additionally we also had this right here and this was something that I don't think it made headlines but upon seeing this demo I realized just how great this robot is in terms of its movement and flexibility so this robot recently made some headlines with its performance recreating the iconic ax gang from The Dance 2004 film Kung Fu

Hustle now this demonstration which was released on the 16th of March 2025 showed the robot wielding two axes who are dressed like an old school boy gangster dancing alongside two professional dancers and if you didn't tell me that this was a robot I probably would have believed that a this was TGI or B there was somebody in that suit now this is actually an achievement because the pm1 executed complex synchronized dance moves that require significant balance coordination and precision and these are current capabilities that push the boundaries of current robotics technology even further now once again this was a video that people could not for the life of them believe that it was real and this one's completely understandable because we have you know real humans side by side and the robot is performing in a way that is super duper realistic which is on part with

the humans now really interestingly we actually got to see behind the scenes where they show us the movements that were being taught to the robot so here you can see the human captured data where they are using a professional dancer to capture the data and then of course apply it to the robot and even this behind the scenes thing the robot just looks CGI I mean there's no other way to describe it because we've never seen a robot move like that which is why this robot is absolutely gaining so much Steam and I think hats off to this company for making things that are really incredible now with this video immediately sparking skepticism online with other viewers like myself questioning whether the performance was sped up CGI enhanced or AI generated and actually just shows us how far robotics has come to the point where people cannot distinguish between real robot capabilities and digital fakery but once

again this is the second full year of full steam ahead for humanoids and Ai and I am truly wondering what things will look like in the year 2030 the year 2040 because as you know technology moves exceedingly quickly so with that being said if you all enjoyed this video let me know what your favorite humanoids are and I'll see you guys in the next video yeah