1X Technologies' new robot leaves X users with a bitter feeling
The artificial intelligence (AI) robotics company 1x Technologies has recently unveiled its newest humanoid robot. However, many users are skeptical about whether the robot is real or just a guy in a suit.
Screenshot from 1x Technologies
The artificial intelligence (AI) robotics company 1x Technologies has recently unveiled its newest humanoid robot. However, many users are skeptical about whether the robot is real or just a guy in a suit.
Imagine a robot that’s more human than any of the robots being developed by major players like Tesla or Boston Dynamics. A robot that learns from other robots and is designed to integrate itself seamlessly into your life as a digital servant.
Well, that’s what 1x Technologies aspires to do: to create humanoid robots that serve the general public and wider society.
The company already has a robot called EVE, but now they’ve released NEO, which supposedly learns from EVE as it collects data from the real world.
Known as an “intelligent, everyday assistant,” NEO stands at 5ft 4 in and weighs 66 pounds. It can walk at 2.5 mph and run at 7.5 mph. This robot can hold 44 pounds and has a run time of 2 to 4 hours.
NEO uses embodied AI to learn from the world around it, aiming to “understand its environment more deeply.”
However intelligent and human-like this robot might sound, the advertisement video created by 1x left users with a bitter feeling.
The video shows “NEO” interacting with a real human sitting on a couch at home. NEO gestures to the woman’s bag lying on the floor, and the woman responds, “Yeah.” The robot then picks up the bag and hands it to the woman.
That’s all pretty normal. We know that robots developed by Tesla and Boston Dynamics have limited dexterity but can perform general tasks. But many people in the comments seem to think that this isn’t really NEO. Instead, it looks like a man in a robot suit.
Introducing NEO Beta.
undefined 1X (@1x_tech) August 30, 2024
Designed for humans. Built for the home. pic.twitter.com/5S6jpRjUQp
Ryan Hoover, who has over 250,000 followers on X, one of who is Sam Altman, commented, “That’s def a dude in a suit.”
Another user agreed with Hoover, saying, “This is a person in a morph suit…we’re not even close yet.”
1X Technologies is entering the race to develop the first humanoid helper as the company competes with Tesla, UBTech, and Nvidia.
However ambitious, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has said that useful” humanoid robots will begin working internally at Tesla factories by 2025.
Nvidia is also working to develop a universal “robot brain,” which is expected to help develop, train, and build the “next generation” of humanoid robots.
UBTech has already deployed humanoid robots to work in factories. The company’s humanoid robot, Walker S Lite, has been deployed to the smart factory of Geely’s luxury electric car brand Zeekr.