CyberOne robot is Xiaomi’s answer to Tesla Bot

Xiaomi this week introduced CyberOne, a humanoid robot that looks set to take on Tesla Bot.

Tipping the scales at a hefty 52 kg and standing 1.77 meters tall, CyberOne showed up stage alongside Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun at an event in Beijing on Thursday, August 11.

I was both nervous and thrilled to interact with him on stage. What did you think of his performance tonight? #CyberOne pic.twitter.com/Je1eXDYEGR

— leijun (@leijun) August 11, 2022

The robot waddled up to Jun before handing the boss a red flower. The reason for doing so seemed unclear, though it was probably to demonstrate that CyberOne is able to competently clasp an array of objects with its mitten-like hands.

After Jun accepted the flower, Xiaomi’s first robot since CyberDog launched into a nifty kung fu move, though it thought better of decking the man who’d given the green light for its creation. Happy to still be standing, Jun then took a selfie with CyberOne and wrapped up the introduction before anything could go horribly wrong with the prototype.

A more cinematic video (below) featuring CyberOne landed on Xiaomi’s YouTube channel, though in it, the robot spends most of its time walking as if in desperate need of a bathroom — and falling over, too. So, no, it’s not yet as agile as Boston Dynamics’ somersaulting Atlas robot.

With a Mi-Sense depth vision module working alongside an AI interaction algorithm, CyberOne is able to perceive 3D space and recognize individuals, gestures, and expressions, “allowing it to not only see but to process its environment,” Xiaomi said in a release.

It added that the robot’s smarts also allow it to recognize 85 types of environmental sounds and 45 classifications of human emotion. CyberOne can detect happiness, too, and “comfort the user in times of sadness,” though the company doesn’t specify how it does this. “All of these features are integrated into CyberOne’s processing units, which are paired with a curved OLED module to display real-time interactive information,” the company explained.

CyberOne reminds us a lot of Tesla Bot, a robot unveiled last year by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The flamboyant entrepreneur said at the time that Tesla Bot would be deployed to “eliminate dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks” in the workplace. A prototype is expected to appear sometime this year.

Xiaomi’s robot also brings to mind the likes of SoftBank’s Pepper robot and Honda’s Asimo, both of which have ended up in the great robot graveyard in the sky. Hopefully, CyberOne will avoid a similarly tragic fate.

It’s not entirely clear what Xiaomi has planned for CyberOne, and judging by the contents of a tweet shared by Jun on Thursday, he’s not exactly sure either. “The story of CyberOne is one of embarking on a new journey of exploration in the field of intelligent robots,” Jun said in the post. “We still have a long way to go, but we always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.” Let’s hope so.

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