Xiaomi CyberOne Robot Revealed To Give Tesla Bot A Humanoid Rival

A year after Tesla announced its humanoid robot — the Tesla Bot — the conceptual general-purpose robot is up against some Chinese competition. On the sidelines of Xiaomi's Autumn launch event in Beijing, the company announced its first full-size humanoid bionic robot. The rather unimaginatively named Xiaomi CyberOne is the second robotic product from Xiaomi and comes a year after the announcement of the Xiaomi Cyberdog, which they showcased at their 2021 Autumn launch event.

Xiaomi

Like most other humanoid robots, most aspects of the Xiaomi CyberOne are still "work in progress." Xiaomi claims that future, evolved variants of the robot will not only have a high degree of emotional intelligence but will also gain the ability to perceive human emotions. Despite the fact that the first-generation CyberOne demoed on stage seemed to have trouble walking, work is underway to improve its ability to master the art of bipedal movement.

Xiaomi claims that the CyberOne humanoid robot uses a combination of complex mechatronics and Artificial Intelligence developed by Xiaomi's dedicated robotics division — the Xiaomi Robot Labs. Despite the product being in its first generation, the company says it has spent a sizable amount of resources and manpower to develop the CyberOne. While developing any bionic robot comes with its share of complexities, things become inherently more complicated if the robot in development is humanoid. Needless to say, the CyberOne project was quite a step up for Xiaomi, even compared to the already complex CyberDog.

The CyberOne is also, perhaps, among the biggest humanoid robots in existence and stands relatively tall at 177 centimeters (5 foot 9 inches) and weighing in at just over 52kg (115 pounds). It's roughly the same size as an average human. Other capabilities of the robot include responding to real-time queries and carrying small objects weighing up to 1.5kg (3.3 pounds) using one hand.

To ensure that the robot's heft remained in check, Xiaomi engineers had to adhere to strict weight limitations. These restrictions eventually allowed them to limit the weight of the motor powering the limbs to just 500 grams. The main motor — located around the hip joint — can exert a peak torque of over 300 nm, Xiaomi claims.

The launch event also saw Xiaomi talk about its proprietary Mi-Sense depth vision module, used on the CyberOne. Along with Xiaomi's self-developed algorithms, these technologies apparently lend CyberOne the ability to perceive space in three dimensions. This algorithm also gives the robot the ability to identify specific persons, gestures, and their facial expressions.

Thanks to the inbuilt MiAl environmental semantic recognition engine and MiAl speech emotion recognition engine, the Xiaomi CyberOne — in its current form — can distinguish between 85 different kinds of environmental sounds. In instances where verbal communication might just not be enough, the curved OLED display on the head can be used to display interactive content and related information in real-time.

Xiaomi made it amply clear that the first generation of Xiaomi CyberOne is just the company's first step towards developing advanced humanoid robots. As such, it will be a while before any of these products make it to your living rooms.