These Robots Are Making Meals for a Nonprofit in San Francisco’s Tenderloin

These potato-salad-slinging AI chefs aren’t taking anyone’s jobs. Not yet, anyway. They’re just here as volunteers. Project Open Handa nonprofit founded in 1985 by local grandmother and HIV-awareness advocate Ruth Brinkerprepares and packages meals to meet the diverse nutritional requirements of people who need them. The effort began in response to the AIDS crisis, but … Read more

The Unitree GD01 Is a Giant Mecha Robot You Can Actually Buy

Unitree is a Chinese company known for making adorable, relatively affordable robots that dance and shuffle and such. Last night, it revealed its latest creation, which is something of a departure: a giant, walking, crawling, transforming, wall-smashing “mecha” called the GD01. An introductory video for the GD01—set to a thundering rock guitar soundtrack—shows the company’s … Read more

Ace the Ping-Pong Robot Can Whup Your Ass

Ace is a robot that aims high: It wants to become the world champion of table tennis. It was developed by Sony AI researchers who, in a new study published in Nature, have shown how this robot, equipped with artificial intelligence, has faced some high-level athletes, holding its own in matches played according to the … Read more

A Humanoid Robot Set a Half-Marathon Record in China

over the weekend in China, a humanoid robot shattered the world half-marathon record—the human record—by seven minutes. The star performer was a robot developed by the Chinese company Honor (the smartphone maker), which finished the 13.1-mile race in 50 minutes, 26 seconds. The human record, set by Ugandan Olympic medalist Jacob Kiplimo, is 57 minutes, … Read more

You Can Soon Buy a $4,370 Humanoid Robot on AliExpress

Listing consumer electronics on the internet’s large ecommerce marketplaces is a key step in “democratizing” the products, allowing them to be purchased by anyone with just a click. It has happened to cars (in the United States, you can buy a Hyundai on Amazon), and now it’s happening to humanoid robots. The Chinese manufacturer Unitree … Read more