The future of mass-produced robots may be nearer than you imagine.
On Thursday, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun capped out the company’s massive Mix Fold 2 smartphone launch by introducing a special new arrival which ended up stealing the show. And the new arrival was CyberOne, the Chinese electronics giant’s first humanoid robot.
The newest member of Xiaomi’s Cyber series, which also includes the quadruped Cyberdog, has “advanced” arms, legs, vision skills, and a slew of other features.
“With AI at its core and a full-size humanoid frame as its vessel, this is an exploration of possibilities of Xiaomi’s future technological ecosystem and a breakthrough for the company,” Xiaomi Global CEO Lei Jun said in a statement.
CyberOne made its debut at the Beijing launch ceremony by sauntering on stage with a long-stemmed flower. While the bot cannot dance or run, it can detect human emotion, understand 3D space, and recognise 84 different environmental sounds. According to Xiaomi, it even comforts its users “in times of sadness.”
The faceless humanoid, who is 5 feet 9 inches tall and is an astrological Leo, weighs 115 pounds and has an arm span of 5.5 feet with the ability to handle up to 3 pounds of weight in each hand.
The body of CyberOne contains 21 degrees of freedom and 13 joints; each degree of freedom can respond in 0.5ms, allowing it to “fully simulate human movements”—albeit extremely slowly. In addition, upper limb joint motors can provide up to 30Nm of torque, while the hip joint can instantly produce up to 300Nm of torque.
“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,” a Xiaomi press release said.
However, don’t get too excited about this humanoid robot. According to reports, each humanoid is projected to cost between 600,000 and 700,000 yuan, or $89,000 to $104,000. So it’ll be a while before Xiaomi considers mass-producing the CyberOne—if ever.
Lei Jun predicted that in some way or another, “we think that intelligent robots would surely be a part of people’s lives in the future.”