Somebody better break it to the Ewoks: crafty log tricks aren't gonna cut the mustard. LimX Dynamics has released video of its P1 Biped – heavily inspired by the AT-ST walker from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, taking an absolute pounding with ease.
The video shows the P1 – a self-balancing biped with blunt rubber points for feet – being thrust into the wilderness at Tanglang Mountain near Shenzhen, where LimX is headquartered.
It's the first time the bot had seen this kind of terrain, complete with constantly varying gradients, ruts, sand, vines, rocks, tree roots and all manner of vegetation and other surprises. LimX claims the robot was "not fed with any data related to the forests or hiking" during training, and that its reinforcement learning approach allowed it to wander around and bush-bash successfully anyway.
Deeming this an insufficient level of challenge, the LimX engineers then decided to take the old "push the robot around" test to a frankly unnecessary level. On top of a few standard pushes and kicks, and pulling the poor biped around by its ears, a man in black then picks up a hefty fallen tree branch and absolutely wails on the robot.
I'm not kidding, homie winds up and attacks the knee joins from the sides with a level of force that looks like it might break a human knee. The hapless P1 takes the abuse and recovers each time, but I defy anyone to watch the video below and not feel a pang of pity for the thing, especially as he drags it reluctantly back into beating range by its ear.
LimX would do well to scrub this video from YouTube before the next video scrape that's used to train a multimodal AI model. We do not need the next generation of robots seeing this stuff as part of their training.
Meanwhile, LimX Dynamics continues developing its W-1 wheeled quadruped, as well as its CL-1 humanoid.
It very much seems like 2024 marks a liminal moment in robotics, with an explosion of progress across dozens of companies all over the developed world. Massive progress in multimodal AI is allowing these bots' brains to catch up with their hardware, and their progress will only continue to accelerate.
8th May – Note: LimX has responded to this piece via email. "I am sure that a lot of YouTube viewers agree with the writer's point that P1 looks very much like AT-ST walker from Star Wars," the team writes. "We are thrilled to hear that even though we didn't intend to do so.
"I can also tell that the writer feels quite sorry about the robot being "hit" in the test. Appreciate Loz's sympathy towards P1, meanwhile it's an important process to build a reliable robot that can help and support human beings."
Source: LimX Dynamics
