Watch awkward Chinese humanoid robot lay it all down on the dance floor

Adam Full-Size Humanoid Robot Charleston Dance Version 2.0 - YouTube

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In a striking display of agility and grace, a humanoid robot named "Adam-U Ultra" has danced its way through a complex, highly energetic routine without faltering, slipping or missing a beat.

In a new video released by the Chinese robotics firm PNDbotics, the bot — which builds upon the company's original Adam robot, unveiled late last year — is seen performing a sequence of complicated steps. The dance is remarkably nuanced and human-like, and it includes complicated arm, waist and feet movements — all perfectly coordinated with accompanying music.

According to PNDbotics representatives, such complicated motion is possible because of the model's 41 independently controllable joints or actuators. These provide Adam with a huge range of flexibility and motion, enabling it to mimic human motion — even in something as challenging as freestyle dancing. Although the video refers to the dance sequence as the Charleston, it's really more akin to a hip-hop dance routine.

All of those actuators are coordinated by PNDbotic's advanced control system and communication architecture. These include an artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform built around Nvidia's Jetson Orin module — a system-on-module (SoM) that combines a CPU, GPU and other components to create a "brain" for AI platforms.

The robot is constantly iterating and improving on things like stability and balance by combining whole-body control and model predictive control systems built on large-scale simulated environments and neural network training.

Adam-U Ultra also includes a sophisticated vision-language-action (VLA) model, an embodied AI system that sees the world, understands instructions and directly controls actions, enabling robots to perform real-world tasks through natural language guidance. Essentially, you can speak to it to tell it what to do and it will respond accordingly. It's backed up by 10,000 samples of real-world behavior designed to help the platform learn and adapt its movement to changing conditions on the fly.

The vision element of Adam's VLA is driven by an Intel RealSense D455 depth vision sensor, which enables precise 3D environment modeling and real-time spatial awareness, as well as a number of lidar and standard cameras.

The fully humanoid robot shown dancing is being developed in parallel with PNDbotics' Adam-U robot, a stationary model designed primarily as a data collection platform. According to the company's website, four fully mobile humanoid robots are also in development, with varying levels of freedom of movement, sensory capabilities and computing power.

One of the keys to Adam's fluid movement is how relatively lightweight the platform is. Even the heaviest model, the Adam Pro, only clocks in at 139 pounds (63 kilograms), while the lightest is a scant 132 pounds (60 kg). All the models stand 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) tall.

PNDbotics claims that Adam can fulfil a multitude of potential roles, ranging from research and laboratory work to medical assistance and rehabilitation scenarios. It says its robots could help train medical personnel in rehabilitation exercises, monitor patient recovery or even collaborate in surgeries.

The company's website also suggests that Adam could be deployed in traditional industrial roles on manufacturing lines, or in service industries as a concierge or receptionist.