Picture this: a pint-sized humanoid robot wearing goggles. Okay, that’s not particularly weird or scary, but what if those goggles have a pair of antennas that let the robot communicate with a drone? Oh, and did I mention that the robot is holding a joystick and is flying the drone? You really can’t make this stuff up.
The race to bring humanoid robots into our lives is heating up, and their sudden ubiquity in public discourse and culture is leading to some strange mashups like journalists and robots, robots and grandparents, and, now, robots and drones.
On the one hand, we have the exciting new 360-degree drone, the Antigravity A1 from Insta360 offshoot Antigravity. On the other hand, you have Unitree’s G1 humanoid robot. The roughly $21,000, four-foot-tall, 77-pound robot has been popping up all over social media, most memorably in this video of it (or one very much like it) wearing a maid’s outfit and running into a mirror.
@willyengland ♬ original sound – willyengland
Most recently, though, the Unitree G1 was enlisted to fly the Antigravity A1 drone. For those unfamiliar with the A1, it’s essentially a mashup of a sub-250-gram drone and your best 360-degree camera.
The quadcopter actually features two cameras; one faces up and the other faces down. Onboard software combines the images so that what you see in the googles is an 8K, 360-degree view of the world around the drone.
In TechRadar’s first hands-on, Camera Editor Timothy Coleman wrote, “the piloting experience felt truly immersive if a little tame, while the aerial videos it can make are totally unique and dynamic.”
He also wrote that when using the Motion Controller, “It’s no exaggeration to say that flying the A1 is child’s play.”
But is it robots’ play?
Antigravity provided a sizzle reel that, to my eyes, looked a little too polished to be real, but they backed that up with a more amateurish clip that, in fact, shows the G1 wearing the goggles, holding the Motion Controller, and with the drone flying nearby. When the G1 moved its hand to the left, the drone flew left, and when it moved it to the right, the drone flew right.
Naturally, I have some questions.
While the G1 features a 3D LiDAR sensor and an Intel RealSense Depth camera, it does not have stereoscopic eyes like ours. Its hands also lack tactile sensors. I have to wonder if the G1 can see through those goggles and if, in fact, it can feel the Motion Controller in its hand.
I’ve seen the G1 in person, and while it looks cool and is remarkably agile, 85% of what it does is remote-controlled. This led me to wonder if the G1 was flying the drone or if a teleoperator was flying it through the G1. I have emailed Antigravity these questions and will update this post with their responses.
There’s a larger question here, though. Why?
I think Antigravity did this to prove a point, one that Coleman made above: it’s so easy to fly this 360-degree Antigravity A1 drone that even a robot can do it.
I guess that’s sort of true, but I think it’s safe to say that no human wants a robot flying a drone over their heads. So maybe we leave the drone work to flesh and bone hands and faces and let robots try and figure out how to empty the dishwasher faster than a snail’s pace.
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