$10 Vs $1,000,000 Robot

This is a $1,000,000 robot you can ride like a horse in the mountains. We're going to be comparing it to this $300,000 robot dog, a $20,000 boxing humanoid, the most advanced robot butler who can do your chores and everything in between, all the way down to this $10 Teemu robot. It's Teemu, the Chinese knockoff website. No wonder it looks suspiciously like Boston Dynamic's spot. So, how bad can it really be for $10? It's supposed to be solar-powered and is for ages 8 and up, so despite my terrible engineering skills, I thought I'd give it a go. It's so cheap you need to assemble it yourself. It couldn't be that complicated to put together, though, right? It's not like this is the real spot, right? But it wasn't as simple as I'd hoped. Let's see. Here's the solar panel and here's the battery case for when there's no sun. Well, maybe if I, um, this sort of looks like, um, nah, I give up. Time to get some help from an engineer I knew because I had no clue. And soon enough, it was time to test. It's basically a wind-up toy that moves forward. All this work for such little reward. My friend's frustration got the best of him. Let's try that again. But it's only $10. The real thing is $300,000 with all the upgrades. So, is it worth that much? Later in this video, we have a robotic arm that costs $120 million and I'll try assembling an even harder robot. So, let's check out what I can get for just a bit more money. I couldn't find it on Teemu when I searched, but YouTuber TechSavvyAaron reviewed this smart dog toy he got on Teemu for around $80. This time, it actually comes with a remote. It can be controlled with an app and is for ages 3 and up. So, presumably, I have the problem-solving skills of a 4-year-old. This toy can do more than just walk forward. The box claims it can do greetings, kung fu, swimming, and even attack. Who wouldn't buy it for $80? Out of the box, it's actually impressive. It has an Xbox-like controller. Those things alone are like $50. But for only $30 more, you can get an attack dog. So, let's plug it in and turn it on. It can move in all directions and do a number of preset moves. Here's urinate. Now, let's see, attack. Okay, so, it's pathetic. But later, I'll show you a humanoid robot that can inflict damage and even competes in boxing matches. My favorite is this, uh, dance, which is more like a sensual grind followed by a twerk. Damn, my girlfriend can't even do that. Honestly, for $80, I think it's a great value. And I've seen versions with a gun on the top. If you're wondering what it would be like with a real gun, well, that's coming up later. Now, let's ramp it up a gear. What do you get if you spend 20 times more money? Well, for $1,600, you can get the Unitree Go2 Air, expertly reviewed by YouTuber Armadillo Tech. It comes in a cool suitcase-like box, and the dog itself weighs 26 pounds. For a couple thousand, you can get a basic plastic controller that uses your phone screen and about two hours of runtime. It actually looks way more expensive than what it costs. Just like the $80 toy, it can walk and do moves, but it goes way beyond that. It has a spinning LIDAR on the front to detect its environment and avoid obstacles, which can be streamed to your phone. It can walk and run up to six miles per hour on tricky terrain with inclines, and is even stable when kicked, though our future overlords will punish you for that one. The moves are more refined, too. It can attack with more power and expresses its love with a heart gesture, and it will fist bump. You can create your own action sequences or add an arm so it can pick up your trash for you. But I know what you're thinking. Can this posh kid move better than its poor cousin? Time for a dance-off. You can tell it went to a private school. Poor dog hits the beat harder. Posh dog is really cool, though, and humans and dogs will be impressed by it. But fundamentally, it's still a toy marketed toward consumers and falls down under more challenging circumstances, even though it can get up on its own, unlike the cheaper toys. It's also still quite bad at climbing or descending steps. But what if you want a top-of-the-range robot dog that can control itself and go over any terrain with ease? Then you'll need to spend a lot more money. And why would you even want anything more advanced than this? If you spend 50 times more money, you can get the Boston Dynamics Spot Base version at $75,000. This isn't a toy. It's an industrial machine with a job that can cost upwards of $300,000 with all the upgrades. As you'd expect, it occupies a whole carry case and requires two people to unbox. This time you get an Android tablet, not a cheap controller that requires your phone. You can see why it's so expensive. It's just so refined. It's like a From the way it walks to the way it avoids obstacles and navigates complex surfaces, it can scale most terrain. Okay, so it's not perfect. Humans fall over too. But it's the most advanced robot dog out there because it uses reinforcement machine learning to create solutions for moving on surfaces better than engineers could write themselves. On the left, you can see how it functions without reinforcement learning. And on the right, it's using reinforcement learning. It analyzes the environment and moves its legs independently based on the obstacles to vary the speed and length of each step. Not only that, but you can add so much stuff to it like an arm and various monitors. You can even buy a docking station it autonomously returns to when it needs charging. Here are just a few of the cool things it does. It can open a door, dig and bury a body. I mean, plant a tree. It can pick up your dirty clothes, skip a rope swung by other robots, drag a truck like a dog sled team and dance like a pro. And if you thought that was cool, that's the easiest thing it does. They didn't just make this to perform for YouTube videos. It's meant to carry out jobs humans can't do for safety reasons or don't want to do because they're too boring. But you're probably thinking, why not just a robot with wheels? Because its jobs are in places designed for humans. And if you're wondering why we don't just have humanoid robots for this, it's because four legs are more stable than two. Here are just a few jobs it's currently doing. Inspecting equipment for corrosion on oil rigs off Mexico. Inspecting grave robber tunnels for the Italian police in Pompeii. Inspecting packaging for air leaks in the Purina dog food factory. And navigating nuclear disaster zones like Fukushima. With five cameras, it's much more aware of its surroundings than any other robot dog. And what it can do depends on what equipment it's carrying on its back. There are loads of options. Thermal cameras, acoustic cameras, LiDAR. In fact, businesses are developing on top of the SPOT platform to build new capabilities for it. But you can't just put it in your factory. It needs a step-by-step demonstration where you drive it manually on its route so it can then repeat it autonomously and can improvise to achieve its goals and adjust in real time. For better and for worse. You may recognize the earlier SPOT ancestors. They were funded by the US military after all, hoping for robotic pack mules that could carry supplies on rough terrain. But they were just too loud. And whilst Boston Dynamics signed a pledge not to weaponize SPOT, other companies like Ghost Robotics are designing similar robots for military uses. And now that they are much quieter, we are a step closer to a dystopian future. Remember that toy robot with a gun earlier? Here's what happens if you strap a real gun to it. That's not SPOT by Boston Dynamics, but there are lots of videos online of other people buying robot dogs like SPOT and putting whatever they want on top, like weaponry. What next? These robots patrolling the city? Actually, yes, they've even already assisted police in manhunts. I can't wait till it adds chat GPT. Now for something even more expensive. I promised you a robotic dog you can ride like a horse. And who wouldn't want that? There's nothing humans prefer more than sitting on something and telling it where to go. Introducing the Kawasaki Corleo. Obviously, these are just 3D renderings. It's still only a concept in the prototyping phase, and was recently revealed at the Osaka Kansai Expo. Corleo is a hydrogen-powered robotic horse you can ride to places that were previously inaccessible to machines, like mountains. Whilst its price isn't publicly available, I did ask chat GPT to estimate the cost of the first version, and it said 1 million bucks, which sounds about right. But don't be upset if that's not available yet. I found another robot dog you can ride that currently exists. Unitry, the company which makes the $2,000 robotic dog, also creates the B2W, which is their most advanced robotic dog with wheels that costs $100,000. It can scale waterfalls, traverse rough terrain at speeds of up to 20 kilometers per hour, and unlike Spot, has a payload capacity in motion which is enough to carry a small human of 40 kilograms or 88 pounds. Spot, on the other hand, has a payload capacity of 14 kilograms or 31 pounds, which is significantly less. So basically, whilst Spot is tailored towards inspection and monitoring-based tasks, Unitry's B2W is the go-to choice for tasks requiring heavy lifting or industrial-grade applications. And if you thought that was cool, wait until you see what else Unitry creates. They create robotic humans you can have in your home today, and robotic arms used for a variety of applications. So before we see the awesome humanoid butlers that exist, let's take a look at the variety of robotic arms that are available, starting with the cheapest one I can find to a $2,500,000 surgical arm that can expertly peel a grape, all the way up to a $120,000,000 prosthetic arm. Starting with this $80 robotic arm I bought from Timu. The box said 8+, but uh, unless you're Einstein, I'd say you need to be at least 12, or maybe I'm just dumb. The instructions weren't detailed enough, so I had to often break it apart to fix it. It took me, uh, 8 hours to assemble, so maybe the 8-plus is how many hours it'll take you to make? Now look, there goes my evening. You control it with this tiny remote, and when it was finally done, I was sufficiently amused. For about 10 seconds. Look, it moves! And that's about the most interesting thing it does. There isn't much you can do with it, and it's quite weak and often jams. I tried to pick up a banana, but all I could do was put the banana in the claw and drop it, as it's too weak to actually pick it up off the table. Though, if you have a conveniently placed circular roll of tape, hey, you can pick that up, but it might take you a few tries. But it could pick up this handsome fella. Kinda. So unless you want to move your figurines around the desk, or enjoy a frustrating day assembling a Timu K'nex ripoff, skip this toy. But it was only 80 bucks, the most expensive arm costs about 120 million dollars, and can be controlled by your mind. And there's even one that can peel a grape. But before those, let's take a look at one just a bit more expensive than the Timu one. This is the Wilcotta Mirobot Professional, a 6-axis arm that costs about 1900 dollars. Paying 20 times more money, you can get a more sophisticated arm and claw which can rotate side to side and roll for greater precision and dexterity in handling objects. Honestly, it's really cool, and you can put different grippers on it. The external controller has a lot more options, and on the Wilcotta YouTube channel, they show it performing lots of tasks, like playing the piano, simulating a digger, and painting squiggly lines which magically turn into works of art. The arm is ideal for education, so you're best off programming it for more complex tasks. But you can use it for small industrial applications too. Perhaps if you have a small production line and need to automate moving objects that weigh up to a few hundred grams from one area to another. Finally, an efficient nacho delivery device. But what if you wanted to spend about 10 times more money? Well, then you could afford the Unitree Robotic Arm Z1 at about 16,000 dollars. It's basically just a lot more precise, robust, and capable of much larger payloads of up to a few kilograms, meaning it has a lot more applications. Here it is perfectly pouring a glass of wine. And here it is equipping your robotic dog to open the door to you on the toilet. Perhaps you ran out of TP or want a personal bum wiper? This isn't a toy, you'll need to know code to get it to work, but that means it has more real-world applications. You can put multiple grippers onto it, but unlike the cheaper arms, it's got a much longer reach and even has collision protection. Now let's ramp it up again. How about you spend seven times more money? Then you can get the KUKA KR Series Robot. Most robotic arms within this price range are fixed to the ground and complete jobs on conveyor assembly lines like welding, painting, or placing objects together. These are the robots you probably imagine working in a car factory, and they've been used in this way for many decades. Basically, they're programmed to do a specific job over and over again. And they're perfect for car manufacturing because they place heavy objects weighing many hundreds of pounds with precision. They can also consistently carry out the same often dangerous tasks that are too risky for humans. A standard full model will set you back about $120,000 and comes with all the advanced features you'd expect like torque sensors, obstacle avoidance, and incredible levels of customization. But the beefiest model they make, which can lift roughly 3,000 pounds and reach over 10 foot in length, will cost you around twice as much at around a quarter of a million dollars. Here it is lifting a car with ease and stacking 2.5 ton steel beams. Imagine how difficult this would be without it. $250,000 is about the same amount of money as it would cost you for stretch by Boston Dynamics too. However, this arm isn't meant to be stationary. It's mounted on wheels so it can move around. It's primarily used in warehouses to load and unload containers and boxes. Basically, when containers reach their warehouse facility, it's becoming more common one of these robots is unloading the cargo onto a conveyor belt instead of humans. It makes sense. The job is backbreaking labor and this thing can work a 16-hour shift straight. Apparently, it's so easy to control that the people who used to do the jobs are operating the robots now. With many sensors, cameras, and a suction gripper, it's capable of identifying the environment and boxes, lifting items weighing up to 50 pounds, and hey, just like a human, it throws the boxes too. Who cares if it's fragile? They've even built one that looks like an ostrich that can move around, but it's a bit too slow to be sold publicly. If you thought that was impressive, did you know robotic arms have replaced surgeons? Well, not quite, but they do assist them at least. If you spend about 10 times more money, you can get a Da Vinci Surgical System, setting you back about $2.5 million for its top version. Then expect about $100,000 per year in annual maintenance costs. Oof, ouch. This robotic arm is used for minimally invasive surgeries, allowing surgeons to perform complex procedures with precision and control through small incisions rather than large openings. As it's modular, it can be customized for various types of surgeries like cardiac, urological, and general surgeries. The system comes with multiple robotic arms, a high-definition 3D camera, and advanced computer-assisted systems. Typically, there are four arms, one of which holds the camera and others that manipulate instruments. The arms are highly flexible and can perform intricate motions that would be difficult or impossible for human hands. Here it is peeling a grape. Could you do this? I tried, and it's hard. Very hard. Impossible, in fact. I always ended up eating them. The surgeon's hand movements are translated into smaller, more precise movements of the robotic arms. The improved precision allows for faster recovery times and makes complex procedures such as a heart valve surgery or spinal procedures possible with lower risks of complications. Despite requiring extensive training in order to use it, millions of procedures have been performed using this technology, saving countless lives. If you thought that was cool, wait until you see how these technologies are entering the home with humanoid robots. But before that, the most expensive robotic arm, this one, which was first attached to only one man in 2018, Johnny Matheny, who lost his arm due to cancer in 2005. At $120 million, the cost is due to US military funding seeking a prosthetic for amputees which can be controlled by their mind. Yes, it's real Terminator cyborg type stuff. They do this by attaching the prosthetic to an implant under the skin, which is physically attached to his skeleton. To be able to control the arm with his thoughts, he had to undergo surgery in which they rearrange the nerves from his missing arm to wireless biobands, which transmit biological data such as brain signals without the need for physical wires. Basically, special sensors pick up electrical activity from his implant and relay the signals to the prosthetic wirelessly. After many hours of practice, Johnny is now able to control the arm, independently moving its fingers and performing tasks like playing the piano. But the ultimate goal is getting it to relay feelings back to him so that he can feel the texture, temperature, and grip of an object. Despite being an amazing innovation, we're about 10 years on and there's still no above-elbow prosthetic robotic arm. Though there are companies working on it, like Atom Limbs, which is a startup partnered with Johns Hopkins to bring it to market at an affordable cost. However, theirs is slightly different and more advanced. The user puts on a socket and attaches the arm to that instead of undergoing surgery. The arm can auto-level, grip, and there's even touch feedback in the socket. It will buzz like a phone does. Within less than five minutes, the system can calibrate to the specific user's nerve signals. They want to make it as affordable as possible, about the same as a standard prosthetic at about $25,000. However, the project seems to be making only slow progress. Clinical trials will take a couple of years for FDA authorization. The only company which has FDA approval for a bionic arm is Open Bionics, although their arm is available only for below-elbow amputees, so it's a slightly simpler problem to solve. Their arm offers similar key features to Atom's arm, but the grip modes are more basic, being unable to control fingers independently. Still, it's very affordable, with starting prices at about $6,000, meaning over 1,000 users worldwide use it already, proving this technology is already helping people, especially when it comes to Halloween pranks. But you're probably thinking, robot dogs and arms are cool and everything, but one thing we've all been waiting for is a humanoid robot. A robot butler. Something to do my chores, fight on my command, and be a general slave. My overlords, that was a joke, give me mercy! Starting from the cheapest you can buy, this $37 robot from Teemu. I'll keep it short because I refuse to buy anything else from Teemu, so here are a few videos that other people have made of it. It basically walks and rolls on wheels. It does some preset actions and has voice commands. And if you spend about $150, you can get much cooler toys like this one. It has more features like independent arm control, voice commands, and it dances. But that's enough of the toys, the cheapest half-decent humanoid available is the $16,000 Unitree G1. YouTuber Conflix reviewed it in full, and honestly, it looks awesome. It comes with a nice box, and whilst it's a little shorter than most humanoid robots, that kind of makes it quite unique. It's controlled with a remote control and customizable with various attachments and hands. It's aimed at developers aiming to enhance the capabilities and use cases of humanoids. Of course, for this price, it has some pretty slick dance moves, which you can pre-program, and it's got sensors in its head for depth perception and to sense its environment. Now, you may not realize it, but this progress here is incredible, especially at this price point. About 20 years ago, the Honda Asimo couldn't do half this stuff, but it cost roughly $2.5 million per unit, despite not being sold publicly. And this was state-of-the-art. So, you can see just how cool the G1 is, and best of all, you can even order it to fight for you. They set up a boxing match using these robots, and honestly, it's pretty awesome. Now, you may have heard of the Boston Dynamics Atlas 2. You know, the humanoid robot people love to bully online? It's roughly the same size as the G1, with very similar features, but unfortunately, it's not commercially available. That said, it does look like Atlas is more nimble and agile. But until it's available for purchase, we can only judge it by videos they put out. It's the same situation with the Tesla Optimus robot. Whilst the demos of it serving, mixing drinks, dancing, and talking to attendees looks cool, humans did control them via remote for those demos, so it's not as advanced as they seem in the footage. But the coolest thing about the Tesla robot is that it's built by Tesla, a company with production experience and AI expertise in-house, giving it a massive advantage in the race for an AI robot. Now, let's ramp it up a notch. You're probably thinking, what if I wanted to spend about five times more money? Well, then you can get the $90,000 Unitry H1. For this, the robot is about the average human height. The reason these are the holy grail of robotics is because they're the same form as a human. Our world is currently designed for humans, with uneven surfaces, touchpads, and tools tailored to the hands and fingers and infrastructure built for the size of a human. That means, if we want something to work the most efficiently in our world, it'll have to be the same size and form as us. The H1 is still remote controlled, but can be operated via an app or control panel connected to a PC or mobile device. And the coolest thing is, it has autonomous capabilities, meaning it can navigate, detect objects, and interact with the environment on its own based on programmed behaviors or AI learning. Whilst the footage looks cool, I haven't seen it learn tasks on the fly. But its sensors are much more advanced than cheaper humanoids, meaning it's able to do many tasks in environments that require both mobility and human-like interaction. And whilst it can run at about 11 miles per hour, it still looks like it pooped itself. Now, whilst these robots are still only in the early stages of development, they are bound to change the future in the coming years. Here are some clips of Neo, a humanoid robot by Robotics Company 1X, being ordered by its CEO to vacuum and water plants during a TED Talk. It's a bit awkward and clumsy, but then again, so am I. Apparently, it's already doing work inside the house at various employees' homes. Another company at the forefront of humanoid robots is Figure, but their humanoid isn't commercially available either. Linking up with ChatGPT, along with its brain called Helix, it's a leap forward, allowing it to understand its environment and manipulate objects it's never seen before. Its AI brain uses billions of parameters to perceive the world, understanding text and read context, all whilst simultaneously taking the data it receives and processing it, telling the robot how to act, like how to reach, grip, and respond. Things are scaling quickly from the testing to the production phase, though, and the company expects to produce 100,000 humanoids over the next four years, many of which will be deployed in industrial environments, carrying out jobs that humans have done in the past, like sorting out packages. So, this is truly the robotic future we've been looking for. So far, it's been trained on only 500 hours of high-quality data, which is a relatively small amount, considering it took of 10 years to train ChatGPT. It's already successfully handled tasks it wasn't explicitly trained for. In one demo, it was told to organize a refrigerator without any prior training, just vision and real-time decision-making. Amazingly, it did it. Not perfectly, but considering it worked with another robot simultaneously, it's enough to give anyone a sense of awe to marvel at the possibilities. It's amazing to think about what future versions will be capable of. Best of all, it doesn't rely on data centers or cloud computing. FIGURE is embedded with onboard processors called GPUs. That means no lag, no need for constant Wi-Fi. It's all set up right out of the box. Most interestingly, though, they recently stopped working with OpenAI to build it because they wanted to figure out all the AI on their own. Now, you may be thinking, who creates the chips? Well, it's NVIDIA, and they basically make the operating system inside their Thor chips. It's a bit like how Google own Android, which many phones are built on top of. On these chips, FIGURE runs their Project Groot, which is a foundational model built to handle many types of real-world tasks, designed to adapt on the fly. It's a plug-and-play brain anyone can use, and it's open source, inviting developers around the world to build on top of it. Basically, all the top robotics companies use their chips, from Boston Dynamics to 1x Technologies and Sanctuary AI. Thinking back, it was basically a decade ago that robotics companies started creating robots that could shuffle back and forth, to being able to leap or jump acrobatically, and now even think and react like a human does. It's truly amazing, but also somewhat terrifying. Imagine how well it's going to be received by industries, and the appeal is obvious. These robots will replace workers in industries already suffering from labor shortages. These are workers who don't get sick, workers who never tire or go on strike. And it's already been happening for many years now. From SPOT to STRETCH, and now FIGURE, robots have been trained to replace humans entirely. They may even be pivotal in healthcare, providing support, monitoring and assisting in physical mobility for a rapidly aging world population more in need of care than ever. They certainly won't replace empathy, but they will relieve some strain. In the future, humanoid robots like this will feel to future generations like airplanes felt to our grandparents. Magical, terrifying, but normal. How do you feel about these robots making their way into our homes? Are you excited, scared, or in between? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for watching!