Right, gather ‘round, because the future of human-robot interaction just got a little… punchier. At IROS 2025, Unitree’s H1 humanoid robot decided to showcase its newfound kung fu skills by unceremoniously clocking Professor Dennis Hong of UCLA. Professor Hong, ever the academic, quipped that perhaps a module on basic manners should precede advanced martial arts in the H1’s programming curriculum—proving that the inaugural casualty of the robot uprising won’t be our infrastructure, but our collective good old-fashioned politeness.
