alt Hacker News> The Unitree demos are prerecorded movements with no real adaptability.
That is not true. The routine is preprogrammed, but there is adaptability. If there wasn't they would fall on the ground in the first 5 seconds. The movement involved in the routine we saw requires continuous adjustment. You can't just record the movement as you would with a video game animation, real physics get in the way and you end up on your back on the ground trying to do a jump and a backflip.
If you think I am wrong, sure I could be but have a look at atlas, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe1dke3Cf7I
The robots motion is not preprogramed at all, see how much more smooth the motion is?
Thats because boston dynamics are using an approach where they try to calculate and take the dynamics of motion into account, just like Unitree.
The kawasaki approach is clearly to use overwhelming torques in an effort to cancel all the dymanics and produce fully controlled movement. Exactly what an old man does as well or a robotic arm in a factory. It's honestly embarrassing it looks like kawasaki has no progress in the last 30 years their robots still move like its 1996.
Have a look here https://underactuated.csail.mit.edu/intro.html for a more indepth explanation of the difference between the two approaches.
I'm honestly more concerned with your lack of understanding of these topics.
There are two main ways to accomplish what the kung-fu robot does.
First you train a reinforcement learning policy for balancing and walking and a bunch of dynamic movements, then you record the movement you want to perform using motion capture, then you play back the recorded trajectory.
Second, you train a reinforcement learning policy for balancing and walking, but also bake in the recorded movement into the policy directly.
Okay, I lied. There is also a third way. You can use model predictive control and build a balancing objective by hand and then replay the recorded trajectory, but I think this method won't be as successful for the shown choreography however it's what Boston dynamics did for a long time.
In both cases you will still be limited to a pre-recorded task description. Is this really that hard to understand? Do you really think someone taught the robot in Chinese language and by performing the movement in front of the camera of the humanoid how to perform the choreography like a real human or that the robot came up with the choreography on its own? Because that's the conclusion you have to draw if you deny the two methods I described above.