Chinese robotics firm UBTECH Robotics released a remarkable video this week appearing to show hundreds of its Walker S2 humanoid robots marching in unison.
The company released the footage with news that it had delivered the robots to multiple partners across the country, where they’ll be put to work in industrial and commercial settings.
But the CEO of rival robotics firm Figure, Brett Adcock, has claimed the video is fake and was instead created using CGI.
Adcock, who founded Figure AI in 2022 and recently unveiled a home-based humanoid robot called Figure 03, pointed to inconsistencies in the way that the light bounced off the heads of the Walker S2 robots.
“Look at the reflections on this bot, then compare them to the ones behind it,” Adcock wrote in a post on X on Thursday. “The bot in front is real — everything behind it is fake. If you see a head unit reflecting a bunch of ceiling lights, that’s a giveaway it’s CGI.”
Digital Trends has reached out to UBTECH to find out if the footage is real, but the Shenzhen-based company has yet to respond.
Certainly, the way the video is presented, along with the accompanying text, it feels as if the company is portraying the footage as genuine, and nowhere does it say that AI or CGI was used in its making.
It would certainly be impressive if UBTECH can prove the authenticity of the content. The company has been around since 2012 and unveiled its first humanoid robot in 2018, so no one is doubting its expertise in the sector.
But mass deployment is the next big thing for the humanoid robotics industry, so the issue is a sensitive one for other firms — Figure and Tesla among them — that are chasing the same goal.
When it comes to releasing dramatic videos like this, the lack of transparency is troubling as it creates doubt about whether shared footage of humanoid robots is staged, or whether the robot is being remotely controlled rather than performing autonomously.
Fabricated videos could even mislead investors, customers, and the wider public about the true state of robotics technology and its commercial viability.
Of course, even if the footage isn’t real, it doesn’t mean that UBTECH hasn’t made the large-scale delivery that it claims to have completed.
Ultimately, the true measure will be the robots’ performance in real-world industrial settings, where they’ll have to demonstrate their value beyond any promotional video that the maker puts out.
