The Chinese seem to think there may be something to this AI/humanoid robot mashup stuff.
From Earth.com:
Disturbing video shows humanoid robots preparing for border patrol duties in China
China is about to send humanoid robots to work at a busy border with Vietnam. UBTECH Robotics has won a $37 million contract, to deploy its Walker S2 machines there starting this month.
The assignment is led by UBTECH Robotics Corp., a Shenzhen-based company that builds full-size humanoid robots for industry and public services.
Its engineers focus on embodied intelligence, which is artificial intelligence that controls a physical robot body, so these machines can handle messy, real-world environments.
Fangchenggang is a coastal city in Guangxi near the border with Vietnam, where cargo trucks, coaches, and day travelers constantly cycle through.
Chinese planners see a border crossing as a tough, real-world test, because schedules are tight and inspections cannot easily stop.
If these robots perform reliably there, it will be easier to argue for similar deployments at airports, seaports, and crowded train stations.
Inside the Walker S2 robots
Walker S2 is an adult-sized humanoid machine with jointed legs, a torso, and arms, designed to move wherever people already walk.It uses autonomous battery swapping, which involves robots changing battery packs without human help, so that it can work with very little downtime.
To stay balanced and avoid collisions, the robot combines cameras, depth sensors, and force feedback in its joints to monitor nearby movement.
That mix of hardware and software makes Walker S2 closer to a general purpose worker than many single-task factory machines.
What Walker S2 units can do
At the Fangchenggang project, Walker S2 units will help border staff guide passenger queues, direct vehicles, and answer simple questions from travelers.Some robots will patrol corridors and waiting areas, watching for blocked exits or crowd patterns that might require human officers to intervene.
Others will move between cargo lanes to support logistics teams, checking container IDs, confirming seals, and relaying status updates to dispatch centers.
Away from the border itself, the fleet is expected to inspect steel, copper, and aluminum facilities, walking structured routes through hot industrial yards....
....MUCH MORE
The Interesting Engineering article this story is based on really stresses the autonomous battery-swapping feature:
The agreement was signed with a humanoid robot centre in Fangchenggang, a coastal city bordering Vietnam. The deployment will involve UBTech’s Walker S2, a model launched in July and described as the world’s first humanoid robot capable of autonomously replacing its own battery.
