Demon Twist Ends in a Thud as XPeng’s Iron Robot Falls on Stage
XPeng’s Iron, a Terminator-like humanoid robot that last year wowed audiences with a lifelike 'catwalk' gait, returned to the stage in Shenzhen. During a recent mall demo, the five-foot-eight robot — weighing about 70 kg — ambled across a marbled floor in front of an eager crowd, then suddenly started twisting its back in an unnatural way before falling over and faceplanting with an audible thud.
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Shenzhen Demonstration Goes Wrong: The Fall and the Crowd
Footage circulating online shows someone breaking Iron’s fall. The roughly 70 kg robot, about 1.73 meters tall (five-foot-eight), was eventually dragged away by three people from the prying eyes of the curious crowd. Some audience members can be heard chuckling as the robot is carried off.
CEO He Xiaopeng Responds on Weibo: Toddlers Learn to Walk After a Fall
Many netizens joked that it was the ultimate proof that Xpeng’s robot is not, in fact, a human in a costume, as some suspected when its human-like gait was first revealed. The damage appears to have been done. As the South China Morning Post reports, footage of Xpeng’s fumble circulated widely on Chinese social media networks, eventually forcing cofounder and CEO He Xiaopeng to address the situation on Weibo. “It reminds me of how all toddlers learn to walk,” he wrote in the post, as quoted by the SCMP. “After a fall, they will stand firm; the next step is to begin running, and to keep running.”
Marketing Fallout: Iron Robot Strapped to a Frame the Next Day
The company was clearly rattled by all of the negative press coverage. During the next day of Xpeng’s marketing campaign, the robot was strapped to a frame, per the newspaper.
Humanoid Robots: Falls, Fortitude, and the Race to Mass Production
Xpeng is far from alone in struggling to keep its bipedal robots upright. We’ve seen plenty of other humanoid robots by manufacturers stumble as well. Case in point, one recent viral video appears to show a human teleoperator taking off their headset, causing the Tesla Optimus robot they were controlling to reel back and collapse. In November, a video circulating online showed a Russian humanoid robot, dubbed AIdol, fall while trying to walk across a stage. Other companies have made major strides in keeping their robots upright. Researchers have managed to teach Chinese manufacturer Unitree’s popular G1 robot to be extremely resilient, allowing it to survive a lot of abuse, from a direct dropkick to being jerked around by a chain around its neck. Most recently, Unitree had one of its G1 robots map out the Winter Olympics logo by trekking 130,000 steps across a snowy, frozen landscape in Altay prefecture in northern China, as temperatures sank to about -46.7 °C. Xpeng is hoping to kick off “large-scale mass production” of its Iron robot before the end of the year — stability be damned, apparently. More on Xpeng: Robotics Company Explains Why Its Terminator-Style Robot Features Prominent Bazongas
About the Author
I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.
