Internet reacts to first-of-its-kind flying ‘baby-faced' robot
This adolescent-looking android is the first flying humanoid robot — but the internet is creeped out by how it looks.
The Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) recently shared a video that updated curious viewers on the project titled iRonCub MK3's progress, but the robot's face seemed to be of special interest to the internet.
'Why does he look so freaky though,' pondered one viewer in a Reddit thread dedicated to the humanoid robot, meanwhile another wrote: 'This is very impressive, but by God, what's with that face? He is staring into my soul.'
'The technology showcased here is great, but why in the f**k does it have to look like a monster baby?' wondered another Redditor.
Some viewers who stumbled across the mechanical creation happened to be especially out-of-the-box thinkers and proposed some wild theories about its appearance.
'When the uprising comes, you'll be much less likely to shoot a cyborg with a baby face,' theorised one user. 'You'll hesitate that fraction of a second, which is all it needs…'
However human the robot may look, conspiracy theorists don't need to fret — it's not controlled by AI. Instead, it's teleoperated, or in other words, controlled by real people remotely.
The Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence research team within the IIT works almost entirely with robotic humanoid technology — and now has five different robots, according to Live Science.
This particular model is the result of two years of research, testing and development. With the jet pack, the baby robot weighs in at 69kgs and stands about 91 centimetres tall.
According to the IIT, the iRonCub MK3 is being developed with 'specific applications such as disaster response' in mind.
Typically, these robotic research efforts focus on land-based rescue and exploration, but the institute believes that implementing aerial locomotion skills will increase the utility and efficiency of any such endeavours.
'This research is radically different from traditional humanoid robotics and forced us to make a substantial leap forward with respect to the state of the art,' explained Daniele Pucci, one of the researchers on the team.
While many internet users expressed profound confusion at the robot's uncanny childlike appearance, it turns out that some of the more humanoid features the iRonCub MK3 possesses have practical purposes.
Functional legs allow the robot to traverse terrain once it arrives via air, and realistic hand and arm capabilities let it open doors, move objects or even interact with things like switches or valves.
Currently, the robot's arms have been replaced by two jet thrusters, but as the project's development continues, it will have its functional upper limbs restored.
The iRonCub MK3 has been tested outdoors in a variety of situations, and has also undergone flight testing in a wind tunnel — another first for a robot.
Though the majority of internet users ragged on the robot's baby face, others saw its charm. 'It's Astroboy!!' one user commented enthusiastically, while another gushed: 'Actually, it's cute.'
No matter where you land on the topic of the android's appearance, don't be too mean about it — after all, this unique-looking creation could save your life someday.
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ABC News
13 hours ago
- ABC News
Australian inventor brothers Edward and Donald Both changed lives, but 'no-one's heard of them'
An electric scooter doesn't have that much in common with a humidicrib. Or a fax machine. You wouldn't expect someone who made heart monitors to be your first port of call when you wanted an Olympic scoreboard. Yet all of these inventions — and around a hundred more — once came out of the same Australian factory. They were all the creations of a pair of brothers, Edward and Donald Both. Across the middle of the 20th century, the Both brothers built things to meet the challenges of the times — war machinery in the Second World War, electric vans to beat post-war rationing, sports technology for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and a lifesaving polio treatment to counter the devastating epidemic. But where their name was once emblazoned on tools around the world, it's now filtered out of sight. Even in their home state of South Australia, the brothers' work isn't common knowledge — although their memory is preserved by a few dedicated museum curators and family members. "Ted" and "Don" hailed from Caltowie near Port Pirie in South Australia and were the eldest and youngest, respectively, of five siblings. Kaylene Kranz, a relative of the brothers, says their regional roots were a source of their inventiveness. "If you're in the country, you haven't got the luxury of picking up the phone and say, 'Hey, come and help,'" she says. Ms Kranz knew both Ted and Don as a young woman — particularly Don, who she recalls as a jolly fellow. "Ted was the put-together man and Don had ideas and ran the business side of it. But together, they were a formidable team," Ms Kranz says. Kellie Branson, a curator at the SA Health Museum, said the brothers' genius came from their ability to work in tandem. "Their brains were opposites, but they still work together to come up with these amazing inventions." The duo didn't tend to invent brand new things, so much as dramatically improve existing tools. Ted once said he didn't even like the term "inventor" – it implied their ideas had come from nowhere. "People who imagine a person dreaming up an entire invention and making it work have the wrong idea," he said in a 1950 interview. "It is a painstaking process, checking each step." This reticence didn't stop people labelling Ted "Australia's Edison", particularly after his work in the 1940s. During World War II, Ted worked on devices that measured machine gun fire, transmitted drawings and diagrams over phone lines, dried blood that could be reconstituted for field transfusions, and helped guided torpedoes. The brothers' electric vehicles were a response to petrol rationing. The scooter never made it to market, but Ted also developed electric vans, which were used to deliver bread until the late 1940s. The drawing-transmitting device, a kind of early fax machine dubbed the Visitel, found uses in confirming horse racing results. There were more sporting innovations, first with tennis scoreboards for the Davis Cup, then the 14,000-light globe Olympic scoreboard at the MCG. Ms Kranz says there's even a family story that they "had television sorted" before anyone else in the 1930s, only to have their plans disrupted by the war. But the brothers' biggest success was in healthcare. The iron lung worked better when it wasn't made from iron. The respirator, first developed in the 1920s, was a lifesaver for people paralysed by polio. "It was very heavy, cumbersome and expensive to make and produce," Ms Branson says. At his new wife Eileen's coaxing, Ted decided to spend their honeymoon funds on making a cheaper version in 1937. "They managed to do one made of plywood," Ms Branson says. The lighter, cheaper, "iron" lung was a twentieth of the cost of commercial iron lungs. Ted took the invention to London, and within a few years, there were hundreds of wooden respirators being distributed across the Commonwealth, helping surging numbers of polio patients. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire for his work. Humidicribs, similarly, already existed in the early 1950s, when Don turned his hand to one. But his portable version could more quickly and safely encase premature babies with the right temperatures and humidity. Then, there are the electrocardiograph (ECG) machines. Doctors had known since the 19th century that placing electrodes over a patient's heart, and recording the signals it emitted, could give vital information about a patient's heart health. By the 1930s, ECGs were accurate enough to diagnose patients — but getting the graphs required an arduous film-developing process, which could take weeks. The Both brothers figured out how to make instant readers: first with glass discs, then with paper and ink-dipped styluses marking out tiny graphs. "You could use the microscope on top of the machine to view the results instantly," Ms Branson says. They could also be transported to hospital bedsides, or even over bumpy roads to the patients' homes. The brothers also worked on electroencephalographs (EEGs) for measuring brain activity. Ms Kranz, who worked in neurology, found herself using EEG equipment designed by the Both brothers years later — alongside a family cousin who'd stayed with the business. From the polished wooden frames to the delicately printed labels, much of the Both equipment is aesthetically pleasing to look at. It's a world away from the bright, boxy plastic of modern medical equipment. The ECGs fit right in to the halls of the library at the South Australia Parliament, where librarian John Weste has put some of the Both equipment on display. "I love the design," Dr Weste says. "It's so beautifully executed — even the carrying cases with the herring bone wood patterns." Packed into their cases, the early ECGs look less like doctors' tools and more like vintage sewing machines. Ms Branson suspects this is deliberate. "I think they did design it on the look of some old sewing machines," she says. For patients who'd never seen an ECG before, a more familiar piece of equipment might be less foreboding. Other pieces might be mistaken for old radios. "It wouldn't seem like they were getting a procedure or a reading. It just looked like the radio was next to their beds," Ms Branson says. Ms Kranz finds this suggestion likely, remembering the beauty of Don and his wife Yvonne's Kensington home on her visits. "They had a lovely house, and we were always given tea out of beautiful cups in the sitting room," she says. "So yes, I think so that it wasn't just 'OK, let's sort this', [it was] 'let's make people comfortable while we're making them well.'" The brothers sold their company to Drug Houses of Australia in the 1960s, but they kept tinkering well into retirement. Ted died in 1987 and Don died in 2005. Ms Branson, who's been collecting Both equipment for the health museum for years, recently travelled out to Ted's grave in Victoria. "It's a humble little plaque. No mention of his inventions. It just says: 'Ted Both, OBE, and his dates.'" Eventually, more company acquisitions and the pace of medical research took the Both name off equipment. Dr Weste, who's been showing the Both equipment to visitors to the South Australia Parliament, says people are surprised to learn the inventions originated in the state. "No-one's heard of them. And that's the great tragedy of it," he says. This is partly why the health museum loans some of the Both equipment out. "Otherwise, these stories will be hidden away," Ms Branson says. "We want these people to be out in the light." Ms Kranz has told her grandchildren about her clever cousins, and she wants them to be more widely known too — but not just them. She says South Australia has a host of other under-recognised inventors. Ms Kranz hopes the Both equipment on display will show people how much medicine has changed in the span of less than a lifetime. "We have our MRIs and our CTs, and our big, whiz-bang machines that twiddle around and go ping, but they managed to diagnose without that in the early days, with very basic stuff."
ABC News
2 days ago
- ABC News
China's humanoid robots compete with United States in 'space race of our time'
Two humanoid robots face off in a ring in the world's first humanoid robot kick-boxing competition. The high-tech robots from a Chinese robotics firm jab and kick each other, and spring back onto their feet after being knocked down. While not exactly on par with professional human kickboxers, it's an impressive display of agility and balance. The show in May came after yet another "world first", as Chinese state media called it, when humanoid robots jogged alongside thousands of half-marathon runners in Beijing in April. Then there was the humanoid robot display during a Spring Festival Gala event, when a group of bots dressed in red and white costume vests performed a routine alongside dancers on stage. State-run media and robotics companies in China have been celebrating advances in the capabilities of humanoid robots — robots that look human with arms and legs — as companies from China compete with robot developers from the United States. Humanoid robots were seen to have so much potential in part because they could adapt to the world as it was, said Alan Burden, a PhD in design robotics. "There's also a cultural element which is very evident in a lot of science fiction — humanoids are compelling because they remind us of ourselves, which makes them easier to imagine in daily life, even if the technical reality is still catching up," said Dr Burden. Jeff Cardenas, chief executive of US robotics company Apptronik, called it "the space race of our time". While it's a race the US has been leading, China has been catching up. Beijing unveiled a national plan in 2023 to build a world-class humanoid robotics industry by 2027, part of President Xi Jinping's tech-led vision for the economy that includes electric vehicles, renewable energy and artificial intelligence. In March, the Chinese government announced it would set up a one trillion yuan ($214 billion) fund to support startups in areas such as AI and robotics. Experts say advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology are helping take the technology to the next level. Chinese humanoid robot startup MagicLab chief executive Wu Changzheng told Reuters it was using new home-grown AI models like DeepSeek, Qwen and ByteDance's Doubao. "DeepSeek has been helpful in task reasoning and comprehension, contributing to the development of our robots' 'brains,'" Mr Wu told Reuters. This is despite the US attempting to restrict China's access to the best computer chips essential to training AI models. Claude Sammut, a computer science and engineering professor from the University of New South Wales, said China's clearest advantage was its domination of the manufacturing supply chain that makes the hardware. "You can find everything you need in certain industrial hubs, so that's why they've been able to drive the cost down," said Professor Sammut. In 2024, 31 Chinese companies unveiled 36 new humanoid models, versus only eight released by US companies that same year, according to a Morgan Stanley report published this year. "Our research suggests China continues to show the most impressive progress in humanoid robotics where startups are benefiting from established supply chains, local adoption opportunities, and strong degrees of national government support," said the report. The potential of humanoid robots to transform economies and societies is expected to be huge. Beijing is aiming for a new industrial revolution where many factory tasks would be performed by humanoid robots. Despite concerns about the impact on jobs, Beijing sees the technology as key to plugging labour shortages in other areas as well. They include elderly care where demand is increasing as China's 1.4 billion population ages. In Australia, robotics company Andromeda Robotics has created a humanoid robot called Abi to work in aged care facilities. Andromeda co-founder mechatronics engineer Grace Brown started Abi during the pandemic, when she found herself isolated and lonely during lockdowns in Melbourne and watching lots of Disney and Pixar movies. "At the time I wanted to build something that was very much like a Pixar character, one that's warm and friendly and approachable. "That was the inception for Abi." Ms Brown believes humanoid robots, companion robots like Abi, will redefine relationships in future. "The vision that we've always believed that was inevitable is that in the future, every single person, in every single continent, is going to have access to their own personal, home companion robot." And it's not long until humanoid robots have a breakthrough moment. "That's going to be like the iPhone or a ChatGPT moment for humanoid robots. "And it's very near." Despite the predictions, some believe humanoid robots still have a long way to go before they become part of everyday life. While robots have demonstrated multiple skills such as sorting objects, cleaning, lifting, and recent advances in artificial intelligence have improved the degree of autonomy in humanoid robots, there is a lot robots still can't do. Even basic physical tasks have yet to be mastered by some of the most advanced humanoids, like Tesla's Optimus. "For example, it takes Optimus almost 10 seconds to put an egg into an egg cooker," explained a US government report from October 2024. Professor Sammut said the robot demonstrations in China had mostly been "flashy demos to show off the hardware". He said the biggest recent improvements in humanoid robots had been in "reinforcement learning". In the past it had been difficult to hand program robots to do "fancy" things like boxing, but now robots could be taught, he explained. This would make humanoid robots useful in the home because robots could learn by themselves. US tech billionaire Brett Adcock has said the aim for humanoid robot developers is for people to be able to talk to robots who can then implement requested tasks. "The end-state for this is you really want the default UI [user interface] to be speech," said Mr Adcock, founder of robotics company Figure AI, which is building a general-purpose humanoid robot. Developers were also using generative AI to enable humanoid robots to better understand requests, then create plans to complete tasks, explained Professor Sammut. "There's still a fair bit of work to do on that because the generative models can produce stuff that isn't necessarily true," he added. Professor Sammut said economics and cost was another major barrier. "Right now, I don't see robots coming down to, like, the price of a phone," he said. "So it's more like buying a car than buying a phone." Despite investments from China, Robert Potter, a visiting fellow with Australian National University and a cyber security expert, said there were good reasons the democratic world "has the edge" in the humanoid robot race. Mr Potter, co-founder of an advisory firm which worked with the United States Defense Department, said China mostly copied innovations. "Areas where they have done well such as camera-based AI and surveillance are areas where the state is a larger market in China than in the democratic world," he added. Professor Sammut questioned whether humanoid robots more broadly would ever fulfil their promise. "Really the big question is, how useful are they going to be?" he asked. "It's really not quite clear what the end goal is, because [industry] is producing this great looking technology but exactly how they can be deployed, people are still working it out." Dr Burden said humanoid robots were probably at the peak of inflated expectations in the "hype cycle". "The next few years will show whether that hype turns into usefulness or evolves into another type of emerging technology," he said. ABC/Reuters
News.com.au
3 days ago
- News.com.au
Internet reacts to first-of-its-kind flying ‘baby-faced' robot
This adolescent-looking android is the first flying humanoid robot — but the internet is creeped out by how it looks. The Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) recently shared a video that updated curious viewers on the project titled iRonCub MK3's progress, but the robot's face seemed to be of special interest to the internet. 'Why does he look so freaky though,' pondered one viewer in a Reddit thread dedicated to the humanoid robot, meanwhile another wrote: 'This is very impressive, but by God, what's with that face? He is staring into my soul.' 'The technology showcased here is great, but why in the f**k does it have to look like a monster baby?' wondered another Redditor. Some viewers who stumbled across the mechanical creation happened to be especially out-of-the-box thinkers and proposed some wild theories about its appearance. 'When the uprising comes, you'll be much less likely to shoot a cyborg with a baby face,' theorised one user. 'You'll hesitate that fraction of a second, which is all it needs…' However human the robot may look, conspiracy theorists don't need to fret — it's not controlled by AI. Instead, it's teleoperated, or in other words, controlled by real people remotely. The Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence research team within the IIT works almost entirely with robotic humanoid technology — and now has five different robots, according to Live Science. This particular model is the result of two years of research, testing and development. With the jet pack, the baby robot weighs in at 69kgs and stands about 91 centimetres tall. According to the IIT, the iRonCub MK3 is being developed with 'specific applications such as disaster response' in mind. Typically, these robotic research efforts focus on land-based rescue and exploration, but the institute believes that implementing aerial locomotion skills will increase the utility and efficiency of any such endeavours. 'This research is radically different from traditional humanoid robotics and forced us to make a substantial leap forward with respect to the state of the art,' explained Daniele Pucci, one of the researchers on the team. While many internet users expressed profound confusion at the robot's uncanny childlike appearance, it turns out that some of the more humanoid features the iRonCub MK3 possesses have practical purposes. Functional legs allow the robot to traverse terrain once it arrives via air, and realistic hand and arm capabilities let it open doors, move objects or even interact with things like switches or valves. Currently, the robot's arms have been replaced by two jet thrusters, but as the project's development continues, it will have its functional upper limbs restored. The iRonCub MK3 has been tested outdoors in a variety of situations, and has also undergone flight testing in a wind tunnel — another first for a robot. Though the majority of internet users ragged on the robot's baby face, others saw its charm. 'It's Astroboy!!' one user commented enthusiastically, while another gushed: 'Actually, it's cute.' No matter where you land on the topic of the android's appearance, don't be too mean about it — after all, this unique-looking creation could save your life someday.
