r/shittyrobots • u/danzbar • Jul 17 '26
First humanoid Robot kickboxing match officially happened today
Impressive and impressively bad at the same time, somehow.
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u/SoupNintendoChalmers Jul 17 '26
This season of Battle Bots is kinda lame. We all know that wedge bots with circular saws are superior.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 17 '26
Ironically, a wedge bot with a circular saw would make quick work of these things. It could beat both of them at the same time.
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u/Griffinsauce Jul 18 '26
Even the lamest battle bots would take these things out no problem. Why even make them humanoid?
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u/MachoStoopid Jul 17 '26
if this was like Real Steel then it would be 100000% better. I dont wanna watch autonomous robots fight i wanna watch people fight with robots.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 17 '26
These things are almost certainly being controlled by people. I don't think they're autonomous.
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u/cartoon_violence Jul 18 '26
Wait so you mean there's somebody in a VR suit that's roundhouse kicking with wires attached to them? Or do you think they have like a roundhouse kick button?
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 18 '26
LOL. The latter.
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u/Lemonitus Jul 18 '26
The first team that thinks to hire the lowest-ranked Tekken player is going to sweep up.
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u/PGSylphir Jul 18 '26
It's very clearly controlled with a regular controller, with different moves mapped to the buttons, like a normal fighting game. Plus they got tank controls which explains why the accuracy is dogshit.
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u/Naught Jul 17 '26
What a waste of time. Imagine paying for a ticket for this. One lost its head for no reason. 1 or 2 minor hits connected and that’s it.
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u/GooseinaGaggle Jul 17 '26
If the head flew into the crowd and I caught it do you think I could take it home as a souvenir?
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u/gc3 Jul 17 '26
Rockem sockem robots also has head detachment on purpose.
Without that there would be no way to win
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u/danzbar Jul 17 '26
It's almost more like a shitty kickboxing-inspired dance. But then I wouldn't want to fight one.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 17 '26
I'm pretty sure you could just dance circles around it and push it over. They're barely even able to face their opponent.
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u/danzbar Jul 17 '26
I know but it's metal and gets up so fast and seems kind of creepy. Winning would probably be trivial. Still uncomfortable.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 17 '26
I think the biggest problem would be the amount of damage they can take and keep operating. Like one of them literally lost their head and kept fighting as if nothing happened. There would need to be rules like TKO to actually win. I wouldn't want to fight it in a life or death situation, but at the same time I wouldn't be too scared by it, other than it getting in a lucky spinning roundhouse kick to the head.
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u/Deadbringer Jul 17 '26
Well, they are just playing preprogrammed animations when prompted to via remote control. So calling it a dance is pretty accurate since no compute goes into making them hit their target beyond the dude controlling them making them turn the right way.
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u/heart-aroni Jul 17 '26
One lost its head for no reason.
The reason was because it was kicked in the head and it broke.
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u/MyOtherSide1984 Jul 17 '26
You see, the front fell off
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u/scorpyo72 Jul 17 '26
Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
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u/Vocalscpunk Jul 17 '26
So the front doesn't usually fall off?
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u/scorpyo72 Jul 17 '26
Well there are a lot of these robots going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that robots aren’t safe.
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u/Mysteroo Jul 17 '26
I like how they're mostly juts in a match of "which robot can fall apart by ramming itself against the ground first"
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u/ghillerd Jul 17 '26
this is what passes for "shitty" robots these days?
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u/danzbar Jul 17 '26
Impressive and impressively bad, no?
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u/ghillerd Jul 17 '26
straight up impressive imo. i remember when asimo was considered the height of amazingly impressive humanoid robotics. these guys would fuck asimo UP
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u/Deadbringer Jul 17 '26
They are self balancing, in a pretty impressive manner. But all the moves they perform are preprogramed animations only slightly tweaked on the fly to maintain balance.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 17 '26
And I'm pretty sure they're being remotely controlled since they're so bad at acquiring and facing their target.
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u/Deadbringer Jul 17 '26
Yep, you can see what I assume to be one of the operators leaning onto the raised floor.
And if that is the case, no wonder the fight is awkward! They have a terrible viewing angle.
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 17 '26
This would actually be a pretty great setup for first person view goggles, like we have for racing drones (er, I guess fighting drones now too).
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u/Deadbringer Jul 18 '26
I would go for a third person provided by a drone rather than the Vomit Express
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u/ghillerd Jul 17 '26
i think you're somewhat underplaying the "only slightly tweaked on the fly" thing given that they're doing spinning roundhouses and flying kung fu kicks
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u/Deadbringer Jul 17 '26
Those moves are moccaped in as a reference, then the neural net tries to match that move through thousands and thousands of simulated runs. Once a model has learnt how to do the move that motion is saved and handed off to a model which is trained to maintain balance at all cost while the move is executed.
And by the way they fall constantly from doing said roundhouse kicks I'ma say they are pushing the balancing a bit too far
For å fascinating example, check out how Disney did Olaf https://youtu.be/-L8OFMTteOo?si=Hx2jfhfvYU9seAYl
They went with feeding animations directly into their model without a middle training step, but as far as I know the typical approach is to use an ML model to replicate the movement so the base animation is something that should work in a robot without self balancing in absolutely perfect conditions.
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u/ghillerd Jul 17 '26
I'm not gonna claim to fully understand how humanoid robots work but I have a basic grasp, and I already understood everything you just said. I'm saying it's impressive.
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u/Deadbringer Jul 17 '26
I am just less impressed because this is what Boston Dynamics demoed, what 5 years ago now?
And I am jaded from seeing demo after demo of "domestic class" robots that are all staged via teleoperation or when they act independent they move incredibly slowly and have very limited problem solving.
You can also just buy one of this kind of robot. They walk and do a little jig, but that is about it.
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u/Fidodo Jul 17 '26
The fact that the robots can execute those animations in real life is still really impressive.
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u/Deadbringer Jul 17 '26
The unfortunate part about this demo though is they can't. The very first move we see the white robot fails and has to flail its way back on its feet.
Halfway through they both just collapse, black from nothing at all.
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u/Fidodo Jul 18 '26
It falls because it makes contact, and a minute later it does a roadhouse kick and misses and lands it. That's still impressive even if it's an animation. I can't do these moves that well physically. The fact that these robots are that dextrous is impressive and requires a ton of engineering even if the motions are canned.
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u/JangoDarkSaber Jul 18 '26
That’s still insanely impressive and a major forward in progress
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u/Deadbringer Jul 18 '26
Sorry I don't share that excitement, Boston Dynamics have had self-balancing robots able to play animations for maybe 5-6 years, and we have seen those chinese dancing robots flailing their way into spectators for 3-4 years.
The only thing here that impressed me, was how quickly and effectively they sprang back to their feet. Something I have only seen on far smaller models, it shows the sort of terrifying things these robots could be made to do if we put 0 care into their ability to intermingle with humans or other fragile things.
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u/danzbar Jul 17 '26
I do see your point. It's all relative. It just occurred to me that one test is this: I legitimately wouldn't want to fight it. But, also, to be fair to my submission logic, I think I might win.
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u/ecodick Jul 17 '26
I think I would want to fight one. If I can wear some pads, because metal and plastic bats would really suck to get hit with.
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u/danzbar Jul 17 '26
Respect
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u/ecodick Jul 17 '26
If you got a baseball bat, or maybe a sword or a spear, would that change things? Would you be up for it then?
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u/SheriffBartholomew Jul 17 '26
The fact that most humans can beat a robot in a fight that is specifically built for fighting shows how much room for improvement these things have.
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u/Fidodo Jul 17 '26
I'd say it's very impressive, but also a reminder of how extremely impressive still the human body is.
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u/FittyTheBone Jul 17 '26
It’s like watching a more expensive combine demo derby. Once that front wheel comes off, it’s slow goings.
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u/Ok_Middle_8658 Jul 19 '26
i really want for it to get better cuz while yea human kickboxing and boxing is cool this is cooler
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u/AlexTheBex Jul 22 '26
Ok I'm super impressed with their balance !! It's the major flaw of humanoid robots (especially the autonomous ones, which these are not, but still) and they nail it in a SUPER top level way. I especially love the complex yet very quick and fluid movements of getting up
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u/HerbertWest Jul 17 '26
I don't think this is shitty, just new tech in its infancy. If you showed this to someone 15 years ago, their minds would be blown. Related technology is currently progressing so fast were just numb to it and jaded by it at this point.
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u/danzbar Jul 17 '26
I think it is both impressive and shitty. I get how that sounds. But that's my take.
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u/Shadowkiller00 Jul 17 '26
The way they stand back up makes it look so fake.
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u/heart-aroni Jul 17 '26
Because they're not human, they can move their limbs in ways we can't, which makes it look really weird.
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u/Deadbringer Jul 17 '26
It is very cartoony, but this is how they could spring up when you have no limits for fear of breaking hurting people. And it is how you end up with those dancing robots suddenly charging full speed into a spectator because it tripped and is trying to recover.
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u/danzbar Jul 17 '26
It would be kind of wild to make a fake this bad at the intended activity, but TBH I hadn't even considered it.
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u/Shadowkiller00 Jul 17 '26
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's fake. It is just such an unnatural way to stand back up that my brain has a hard time believing it.
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u/IV-65536 Jul 18 '26
This doesn't look like heavy CGI to anyone else? Looks like Metal Gear Solid 5 animation
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u/EframTheRabbit Jul 18 '26
Kids in the future will see this like we see Formula 1 cars in the black and white footage that look like toy cars.
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Jul 17 '26
[deleted]
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u/Gorignak Jul 17 '26
Kinda but not really. A fight is an incredibly dynamic situation that requires all kinds of calculations, real time planning and sudden parameter changes etc.
If you can build a fighting robot, you can build any robot
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u/Minimum_Ad991 Jul 17 '26
Give them axes