South Korea's ROBOTIS says it taught its open-source humanoid robot to dance like a K-Pop star using just smartphone footage.
Seoul-based ROBOTIS, whose Dynamixel actuators power Disney Imagineering's Olaf bipedal robot, is developing its AI Sapiens platform to rival Unitree's G1.
The team says it taught the compact humanoid to perform the "REDRED" dance challenge by the group CORTIS with no specialized motion-capture setup. They used software to convert the recording into motion data for the robot's digital twin to train on with reinforcement learning in simulation.
In the virtual world, the humanoid robot practiced the movements over and over to find the best ways to balance and move safely. The learned behaviors were then transferred to the physical robot through a process called Sim2Real, short for Simulation to Reality.
The AI Sapien robot stands 1.3 meters (4 feet 3 inches), weighs 34 kg (75 lbs), and boasts 23 degrees of freedom (DoF). Each of its joints is powered by the company's advanced Dynamixel Q actuators. The robot’s onboard artificial intelligence runs on an 8-core ARM processor, with a Mali GPU and a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU). Its battery lasts for about an hour or two per charge.
Its technical specs are similar on paper to China's Unitree G1 humanoid, which has soared in popularity among researchers, developers, and content creators thanks to its relatively low entry price. However, AI Sapiens is fully open sourced, while only higher-end G1 configurations offer the same level of customizability.
ROBOTIS, launched in 1999, has not confirmed a release date or pricing, but Korean reports indicate it'll be below $10,000.