Footage shows a humanoid robot thrashing its arms and going ‘berserk’ as handlers cower from it in a workshop.
The robot appears to be made by the Chinese company Unitree, one of the market leaders in robotics, which builds some of the most advanced technology available.
Their H1 model has a distinctive hollow face, and can walk and run independently. Last year, it earned the world record for the fastest humanoid robot, with a top speed of 7mph.
The company has not yet responded to the video, which has been widely shared by tech accounts on social media, with viewers comparing it to The Terminator.
Xiaoguang Zhang, the chief executive of Westwood Robotics which is based in California, said the video ‘shows just how unpredictable—and dangerous—a humanoid robot can become when safety is overlooked’.
He added that the video, whose source has not been credited, appeared to be real, adding: ‘Our robots used to do that a lot years ago when I was a grad researcher, before we learned how important a remote ESTOP is.’
Robots are set to become more and more widespread in our daily lives, so these issues could soon be something we all have to grapple with.
The machines are often powerful and heavy, so have the potential to cause serious injury even from something as simple as falling over.
Mr Zhang said wireless emergency stops were crucial to deal with robots malfunctioning.
But commenting on his post, Elad Inbar, the founder of RobotLab, a company providing robotics and AI for education and business, said: ‘The more I watch this video, the more I realise it’s programmed to move like that, just to create a viral video…’
Mr Zhang responded that this would be ‘stupid’, which Mr Inbar said he agreed with.
It is thought that the robot may have thrashed around like this because it lost its sense of balance.
In the video, it is tethered at the head, meaning the code it usually uses to correct its balance would not have given the usual results.
As smaller movements failed to work, it may have resorted to more sweeping movements to try and balance, giving the impression it had gone Skynet on us.
It follows an incident earlier in the year, when a humanoid robot appeared to ‘attack’ a crowd at a spring festival in Tianjin, northeast China.
Security staff at the festival were forced to intervene and drag the erratic robot away.
In another incident, a robot in Tesla’s Texas factory pinned an engineer down and sank its claws into his back and arm, leaving a ‘trail of blood’, according to an official incident report.
Another worker was forced to hit the emergency stop button to free their colleague from the robot’s grasp when he was unable to escape.
Last year, the CEO of British robotic harvesting company Dogtooth told Metro ‘the robotic future will soon be upon us’, and 2025 is expected to see autonomous robots pop up more and more in our daily lives.
If you live in Barnsley, you might even see one delivering your Evri parcels, as the company is testing a robotic dog which can jump in and out of vans and even climb stairs.
Metro has contacted Unitree Robotics for comment.
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