Unitree, never one to shy away from a grand entrance, has just unleashed its latest metallic marvel: the H2 bionic humanoid. This 180cm, 70kg marvel of engineering purports to be “born to serve everyone safely and in a friendly manner” – a tagline that, one suspects, will be thoroughly stress-tested in the wild, much like a new flat-pack furniture instruction manual.
But here’s where things get truly interesting, and perhaps a touch audacious. While many of its robotic brethren are busy painting the world with laser beams via LiDAR, the H2 appears to be charting its course with what looks suspiciously like a stereo camera setup. A bold move, indeed, in a world obsessed with every single millimetre of precision.
Which, naturally, leads us to the million-dollar question: can this bionic butler’s depth perception truly hold its own? We can only fervently hope its spatial acumen is a good deal more reliable than, say, the average human’s after a particularly generous Sunday roast, or indeed, after attempting to parallel park in a crowded city centre. The future of friendly, safe servitude, it seems, might just hinge on how well it can avoid tripping over the cat.
