I met a lot of weird robots at CES – here are the most memorable

CES has always been a robotics extravaganza, and this year’s event saw the announcement of a number of significant robotics developments, including the new, production-ready beginnings of Atlasthe humanoid from Boston Dynamics. Then there were all the robots in showrooms, where robots often serve as good marketing for the companies involved. While they don’t always give a completely accurate representation of the current state of commercial deployment, they nevertheless give visitors a glimpse of the direction it could take. And of course, they’re fun to watch. I spent quite a bit of time looking through the robots on display this week. Here are some of the most memorable ones I’ve encountered.

The ping pong player

The movie Marty Supreme came out a month ago, so I guess it’s only fitting that there’s a ping-pong-playing robot at this year’s convention. The Chinese robotics company Sharpa had installed a robust robot to play competitive table tennis against one of the company’s employees. When I stopped at the Sharpa booth, the robot was losing to its human competitor, 5-9, and I wouldn’t characterize the game that was unfolding as particularly fast-paced. Still, the spectacle of seeing a robot play ping-pong was impressive enough in itself, and I’m sure I’ve known humans whose paddling skills were basically on par (or slightly worse) than the robot’s. A Sharpa representative told me that the company’s main product was its robotic hand, and that the full-bodied robot was shown off at CES to demonstrate hand dexterity.

The boxer

One of the exhibits that attracted the biggest crowds was about the Chinese company’s robots. EngineAIwhich develops humanoid robots. The robots, nicknamed T800 (a nod to the Terminator franchise), were in a fake boxing ring and were designed as fighting machines. That said, I never saw any of the robots hit each other. Instead, they would do a sort of shadowbox close each other, without ever really making contact. They were also a bit unpredictable. One of them continued to walk out of the ring and into the audience, which naturally aroused the interest of the spectators. At another point, one of the robots tripped over its own feet and then ended up face down on the ground, where it lay for a while before deciding to get back up. So it’s not exactly a Mike Tyson situation, but the machines still managed to evoke a kind of creepy humanoid behavior that made for some high-quality entertainment. I heard one observer joke, “That looks too much like Robocop.”

The dancer

Dancing robots have long been a staple of CES, and this year was no different. This year, the torch of dance movement was carried by robots from Unitree, a major Chinese robotics manufacturer that was scrutinized for potential links with the Chinese military. Unitree has made a number of impressive announcements regarding its product base, including a humanoid robot claimed to be capable of run at speeds of up to 11 mph. I didn’t see any evidence of anything nefarious at the Unitree booth this week: just a lot of robots feeling the beat.

The convenience store clerk

I stopped at the booth of Galbot, another Chinese company that claims to focus on large multimodal language models and general-purpose robotics. Galbot’s booth was designed to look like a convenience store, and his robot appeared to have been synced with a menu app. A customer would come to the stand, select an item from the menu, then the robot would fetch the selected product for them. After choosing Sour Patch Kids, the robot dutifully retrieved a can from the store for me. According to the company’s website, the robot has been deployed in a number of real-world settings, including as an assistant. in Chinese pharmacies.

The housekeeper

Creating a machine capable of folding laundry has long been one of the main ambitions of the commercial robotics community. The ability to pick up a T-shirt and fold it is considered a fundamental test of automated competence. For this reason, I was quite impressed by the exhibit from Dyna Robotics, a company that develops advanced manipulation models for automated tasks. There, a pair of robotic arms could be seen efficiently folding the laundry and placing it in a pile. A Dyna representative told me the company has already established partnerships with a number of hotels, gyms and factories.

One of these companies, the representative told me, is Laundry Monsterbased in Sacramento, California. Monster integrated Dyna’s shirt-folding robot into its operations late last year and now describes itself as the “first laundry center in North America to launch a state-of-the-art Dyna robotic folding system.”

Dyna also has impressive support. He reached a $120 million deal Series A fundraising in September, this included funding from Nvidia’s NVentures, as well as Amazon, LG, Salesforce and Samsung.

The butler

I also stopped by LG’s section at CES to take a look at its new home robot, CLOid. It was cute but it wasn’t the fastest robot on the block. You can read my full review of this experience here.