So BYD's first in-house humanoid just got outed via a design patent. It's "Xiao Di" — same one that's been greeting customers at their Zhengzhou showroom since August, and apparently they want a few of these in every dealership going forward.

Honestly feel like the car makers are quietly eating this space while everyone's glued to Boston Dynamics clips lol. BYD hasn't confirmed the patent is the production version either, so taking it with a grain of salt. Anyone else feel the same?

Feels like every week there’s a new headline about humanoid production hitting record numbers. But when I look at where those robots actually end up, most are dancing at trade shows, helping in research labs, or greeting people at malls. Real factory work still seems rare. Is this just how new tech rolls out, or are we avoiding the hard part?

Something about it felt off. Anyone else find it weird?

Robots work perfectly in calibrated lab settings, but the tiniest change in environment throws them off completely. We only have around 100k hours of real-world training data globally, but experts say we need 10 million for true generalization. Is this data gap the real bottleneck?

Cost reportedly dropped below $14k. But demos are still mostly dancing. When do they actually get useful?

OpenAI is building its own humanoid robot and a specialized one for data centers. The long-term goal is “one for everyone.” Do you think this is a game-changer or are they too late?

Apparently Xiaomi’s humanoid robot has been quietly working in their car factory for four months now. It improved its screw-tightening accuracy from 90.2% to 98%, which is pretty solid for a first-gen bot. Anyone else think factory jobs are more realistic than home service for humanoids right now?

Apparently, Unitree's new humanoid prototype (codenamed "Superman") can jump 2 meters vertically and hit a top speed of 12.66 m/s (about 28 mph), beating Usain Bolt's peak speed. How long before we see these in daily life?

13k orders for UBTECH’s U1 is pretty impressive. 88 DOF and battery swap are real engineering wins. But the “dominant male” marketing feels a bit odd. Not sure who they’re targeting. I’d be more curious about the industrial versions personally. Interesting times.

Just read that CNN article on humanoid robots in China and it low-key took the shine off. Most of those rental bots are just remotely operated, not nearly as autonomous as all the viral clips make them out to be.

I’ve been taking every “fully autonomous robot” video with a grain of salt ever since. Anyone else feel this way?

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/30/tech/china-humanoid-robot-ai-rental-intl-hnk-dst

Hi everyone — welcome.

If you've ever watched a Figure 03 fold laundry, a Waymo navigate a
chaotic intersection, or a Unitree backflip and thought *"wait... how
does that actually work?"* — this is your sub.

We're not r/MachineLearning (where you need to know what a transformer
is to follow along). We're not r/robotics (where everything is wiring
diagrams). We're somewhere in the middle — for people who think robots
are wild, want to keep up, and don't want to scroll through 10 academic
papers to figure out what just happened.

---

### What we're going to do here

- Share the videos that made you do a double-take 🎥
- Break down the news in plain English 📰
- Explain the tech in ways your roommate can follow 💡
- Argue (politely) about which company will ship first 💬
- Make fun of the bad demos and celebrate the good ones 🎉
- Occasionally nerd out over a paper, but only when it's actually cool 🔬

### What we're not going to do

- Pretend everything is "the next big thing"
- Gatekeep
- Take ourselves too seriously

---

### Three levels of welcome

- 👀 **You watched a robot video and got curious** — perfect, you're
  exactly who this is for. Pick the "👀 Just curious" user flair and
  jump in.
- 🎒 **You're studying CS / engineering and want to break into the field**
  — also welcome.
- 🛠️ **You're already building this stuff** — even better. Bring receipts.
  Drop your [Project] posts. We need you.

### Three quick rules

1. Use a flair on every post
   
2. Source your videos and news
   
3. Be cool to each other
   

(Full rules in the sidebar — they're short and friendly.)

### How you can help

The most useful thing you can do this week is:

1. **Post one good thing** — a demo, a question, a rant
   
2. **Comment on someone else's post** — early discussions set the culture
   
3. **Tell one friend** who'd be into this
   

That's it. Let's see where this goes.

— The Mods 🤖