After the stage went dark and the lights came up, 16 human-sized humanoids (human-shaped robots) standing in a triangular formation began performing martial arts moves to the music. The movements were so precise it felt like watching a "knife-like group dance."
The humanoids repeatedly changed their positions and executed crisp kicks, somersaults, and jumps with complex steps, then started doing drunken boxing moves seen in movies. Their upper bodies swung broadly forward and back with the distinctive unsteady-looking steps, but they did not lose balance. There was no creaking in the consolidation moves. These martial arts routines are said to have been taught after a robot trainer took the humanoids to the Shaolin Temple on Mount Song in Henan province.
China's leading robot company AgiBot (智元机器人) held a gala called "A magical night of robots" on the 8th. The gala, streamed live online, featured 12 programs, with more than 200 robots, not humans, as the stars. AgiBot's latest models, including G2 and X2, were mobilized in full. Robots filled not only the stage but also the audience seats. AgiBot billed it as "the world's first robot gala."
The gala featured not only dance and martial arts but also a variety of performances. It opened with a humanoid dance performance using wire action, followed soon after by a comedy play. The humanoids, dressed in clothes and acting, were not mere props but characters that traded lines with the actors. Because in comedy even a one-second delay or haste can break the flow, the humanoid "actors" kept pace without mistakes.
Next came a humanoid with a woman's face and fairy ears. Sitting in a chair, it began singing a ballad, nodding to the beat and even closing its eyes like a singer pouring emotion into a song. It looked as natural as an animation rather than a real robot, yet its facial expressions and movements were so realistic that it evoked an odd sense of unease.
In addition, about a dozen female dancers paired with humanoids to waltz to Shostakovich's music, and there were also a robot magic show featuring card tricks and levitation, a robot fashion show, and a robot talk show. In one dance performance, a humanoid was shown riding a quadruped robot (robot dog).
This gala, which ran for about 50 minutes from 8 p.m. local time on the 7th, is being assessed less as a bid for fun in itself and more as a show that demonstrated the potential of "robot entertainment." The robots on stage executed movements more smoothly than the frequently seen "knife-like group dance" performances of the past, and they appeared to have completed training for a variety of entertainment scenarios beyond dance.
Shangguan News in Shanghai, where AgiBot is headquartered, said, "For robots to dance in formation without error, precise group-control technology is essential, and to reproduce martial arts moves, outstanding flexibility is needed," adding, "On a stage that demands millisecond (ms, one-thousandth of a second) reaction speeds and flawless collaboration, even a single small variable such as a sensor error or signal interference can lead to a mistake, but performing without error is meaningful."