Chinese company busted showing off humanoid robots that actually have humans inside

Technology@beehaw.org – 11 points – 1 months ago

Chinese Company Busted Showing Off Humanoid Robots That Actually Have Humans Inside

During the World Robot Conference 2024 in Beijing from Aug 21 - Aug 25, the company Animatronics company EX-Robot (or EX Robots as reported by some news media) hired 2 women cosplayed as robots to spice up the exhibition.

Footage making the rounds on social media shows what appear to be astonishingly lifelike humanoid robots posing at the World Robot Conference in Beijing last week.

But instead of showing off the latest and greatest in humanoid robotics, two of the "robots" turned out to be human women cosplaying as futuristic gynoids, presumably hired by animatronics company Ex-Robots.

"Many people think these are all robots without realizing they’re actually two human beings cosplayed as robots among the animatronics," reporter Byron Wan tweeted.

While somewhat uncanny at first glimpse, the illusion was shattered once an image of one of the hired women having lunch at the event started circulating online. Even humanoid robot cosplayers have to eat, it turns out.

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Wait a moment, did anyone actually think those were robots? Did anyone claim they were actual robots? I saw the videos going around and people were generally just impressed at the makeup and costume work.

Replies in the twitter link make me laugh though.

@VicBeeSee: Full on idiotic post, the company didn't pretend they were robots.

@Byron_Wan: It did… it didn’t tell others that those were human beings.

This either sounds like someone trying to make an issue out of nothing, or someone who got momentarily tricked and is embarrassed about it.

@PatheticGroundThing

It's in the article:

Why the company chose to hire human cosplayers for last week's World Robot Conference remains unclear. Were they hired as "booth babes," an outdated and sexist form of promotion? Or were they purposefully there to trick attendees into thinking they were robots?

Given the reception of the videos on social media, it's possible it's a mix of both.

Asian countries are still going all in on "booth babes", so that's probably it.

I have to say after watching the videos, boo to the corpo for the weird exploitative lies, but kudos to the two women for staying in character! They legit put effort into moving like the real robots around them, and all while in what were probably uncomfortable costumes. I hope they get positive social media attention!