Holy dancing Chinese robots Batman!
- Adam Spencer
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Perfectly choreographed Chinese robot gymnastics scare some and excite others. NerdNews busts some moves.
(first published on my substack )
Do the robot.
One of the hottest memes in the geek world right now is the comparison video of the dancing robots from the 2025 Chinese Lunar New Year broadcast and last week’s Spring Festival Gala extravaganza.
The at‑the‑time mind‑blowing, but now slightly clunky, 2025 dancers have been replaced by gyrating, synchronised, backflipping humanoids that seem to excite and terrify people in equal measure.
I mean, that’s pretty cool dancing.
It is important to note that robots trained thousands of times to do a specific routine are very different to humanoids that could assess your house and clean it.
But for many people, the promises of Elon Musk and his acolytes that within a few years there will be one, maybe ten, billion robots on Earth suddenly don’t seem so far‑fetched.
Bloody hell. As if AI wasn’t enough to keep an eye on.
So are we racing down the freeway to Skynet, blissfully unaware that our robot overlords are moments from seizing control? Or will our grandchildren look back at some of the ways our generation died at work in the same way we tut‑tut when we hear about Victorian‑era kids being sent down coal mines?
Time will tell. But I don’t get the impression we’ve got that much time.
The rise of the machines.
Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE, released a MetaTrend report in robotics last year that makes for fascinating reading.
Entitled “2025–2035: The Rise of Humanoid Robots,” it quotes experts who predict anywhere from one to ten billion (yes, 10 BILLION!) robots in deployment by 2040, as performance grows while prices per unit plummet.
Agriculture, construction, eldercare, logistics and manufacturing are cited as the sectors to be most impacted.
"Beyond any single technical advancement, the convergence of five major technological areas is supercharging this field: multimodal generative AI, high‑torque actuators, increased compute power, enhanced battery life, and cameras and tactile sensors." Peter Diamandis
However, the fact that the potential market size varies in estimates from 38 billion dollars (Goldman Sachs) to 24 trillion (Ark Invest) points to how this is still a highly speculative space.
One of the most fervent evangelicals on this topic is, surprise, surprise, Elon Musk. With the Tesla CEO promising the Optimus humanoid robot will retail for $20-25,000.
“You can basically create a world where goods and services prices are trending to zero in the limit and GDP spikes to infinity... You basically can request anything you would want and it would be relatively affordable for everybody in the world.” Elon Musk
Then again, old Elon first predicted self‑driving cars would be everywhere by around 2015, and has adjusted that figure regularly since, so any prediction of his may be best taken with a shaker‑full of salt.
Regardless, as the meme‑video shows, robotics is hurtling ahead. And at least one expert feels Australia is being left behind.
Tip of the iceberg.
Aussie robotics guru Dr Catherine Ball has seen even more impressive robots than the breakdancing Beijingites.
“I was at the world’s biggest tech show, CES, this year. Those Chinese robots are just the tip of the iceberg.”
Ball despairs at how far Australia is behind in what will be one of the world’s boom industries over the next few decades.
“We are so far behind in Australia because we don’t have a native robotics industry that’s supported by government. People are leaving.”
She points to Grace Brown, founder of the Australian robotics start‑up Andromeda, whose Abi companion robot is already deployed in Aussie aged‑care facilities, where they do everything from lead tai chi classes to one‑on‑one conversations in any of 90 languages with the 40% of residents who get zero visitors per year.
The ethics of robotic companionship are murky for some, but let that 40% figure sink in before rushing to judgement.
Ball points out that Brown is now basing herself in San Francisco, hiring at a rate of knots and growing in a way unimaginable from Australia.
Just imagine if those high tech manufacturing jobs were in Victoria.
Eye-robot.
Given the explosion in the number, speed and range of applications of large language models in the 3 years since GPT4 dropped, it is understandable that they have commanded our attention.
But I’d suggest that has meant we’ve taken our eyes off the robots just a tad. And of course, cutting edge robotics will be deeply entwined with AI and its attendant ethical challenges.
Regardless of what the Chinese dancing robots truly represent, they just may have made millions of people sit up and take notice of where robotics is going.
That’s a tune I can get down to.
Hey I'm now also on substack.
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