World’s Fastest Bipedal Humanoid Definitely Not a Sign Robots Will Destroy Us

Disclaimer: While this article is based on well-built facts, it does also contain a few nuts and bolts of satire.

Robots are here for our enjoyment. They are definitely not here to destroy us. You can tell by the way China’s Unitree Robotics refers to its bipedal incarnation as “humanoid,” and not something creepier like… I don’t know… Jeffrey Dahmer – that would have been a red flag. It’s got the word “human” in the name. Why would it want to end the part of civilization it was named after? That’s just silly.

Some people are wary of the fact that this is a company currently renowned for producing the strongest, fastest, most relentless quadruped robots on the market. And sure, the video of them climbing stairs while an athletic human man tries in vain to impede their seeming inevitable progress, seems creepy and maybe a little bit metaphorical. But you know what else has four legs and loves to climb stairs? Puppies. Maybe folks are overreacting here.

Sure, the latest incarnation of the Unitree H1 humanoid version of the same robot – called the Evolution V3.0 – looks distinctly more like a person and runs at the fastest bipedal speed ever clocked by a robot, but look closely. This is a robot whose hips look less threatening than they do maternal. Maybe it just wants to give you a hug. Besides, when it does run at those remarkably fast speeds, it looks kind of funny doing so. I’m giggling just thinking about it.

Is it because it doesn’t have a face or its arms look like weapons? You know who else is scared of things that are different than them?

Racists.

Maybe you’re one of those people bothered by how the robot seemed to be doing a military style salute before it started dancing in its introductory YouTube video. You know who else did that same thing? Beyoncé… at halftime of the Super Bowl. We need to relax and just appreciate good entertainment. Sure it’s hard to argue that the Evolution V3.0 doesn’t look ominous climbing the stairs undeterred by the human furiously trying to stop him. But as we all know from the online captcha tests to determine if we are a robot or not, these dimwitted machines can neither identify staircases or stoplights when given the choice.

Everything is just fine.