It\u2019s one small step for man \u2014 and one giant, badass layup for robot kind.<\/p>\n
Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have programmed a Unitree G1 humanoid robot to play basketball, almost perfectly mimicking the skills of a human athlete.<\/p>\n
A video shared by HKUST PhD student Yinhuai Wang shows the robot dribbling, taking jump shots, and even pivoting on one of its feet to evade the student\u2019s attempts to block it from taking a shot.<\/p>\n
Wang called it the \u201cfirst-ever real-world basketball demo by a humanoid robot,\u201d boasting that he \u201cbecame the first person to record a block against a humanoid.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an impressive demo, showcasing how far humanoid robotics has come in a matter of years. Unitree, in particular, has stood out in an increasingly crowded field, with its G1 rapidly picking up new skills.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve seen the four-foot-four-inch humanoid perform impressive kung fu moves<\/a> and easily shrug off a direct flying dropkick<\/a> from an adult human. We\u2019ve even seen two of them take each other on in a head-to-head kickboxing contest<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wang and his colleagues are teaching robots how to play basketball through a system they\u2019ve dubbed \u201cSkillMimic,\u201d which is described on his website<\/a> as a \u201cdata-driven approach that mimics both human and ball motions to learn a wide variety of basketball skills.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSkillMimic employs a unified configuration to learn diverse skills from human-ball motion datasets, with skill diversity and generalization improving as the dataset grows,\u201d the writeup continues. \u201cThis approach allows training a single policy to learn multiple skills, enabling smooth skill switching even if these switches are not present in the reference dataset.\u201d<\/p>\n While netizens were generally impressed by the robot\u2019s basketball skills, others were a little more skeptical.<\/p>\n \u201cLove that the programmer focused on showboating rather than fundamentals,\u201d one wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cRobots will do everything but fill the dishwasher,\u201d another joked<\/a>.<\/p>\n Others imagined a future in which bipedal robots dominate sports.<\/p>\n \u201cMan, I hope I get to see proper robotics basketball leagues,\u201d another Reddit user mused<\/a>.<\/p>\n