At the recent Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE World summit in Houston, Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert revealed in an interview that his AI Institute has purchased robots from Chinese robotics company Unitree Robotics for capability testing. Raibert stated that despite Unitree being a competitor, he found it valuable to purchase their robots to understand their capabilities.
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He mentioned: "Our lab bought Unitree's humanoid robots, and also several smaller, relatively inexpensive robots. Even though we are competitors, understanding their technology is very important." He attended the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai last summer, where he was impressed by Unitree's display of 27 humanoid robots and exchanged views with Unitree's CEO, believing their work to be excellent.
Marc Raibert specifically highlighted the wave of Chinese AI innovation sparked by DeepSeek. He stated: "I'm excited to see innovation like DeepSeek coming from China, but this is just the beginning. The entire AI field is still evolving, we're not at the end, and there will be more technological innovations in the future."
When discussing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Raibert pointed out that building both hardware and software is equally important, but when AGI will be achieved is a complex question, and there is some hype involved. He believes that intelligence has many dimensions, and machines still have a long way to go to achieve complete intelligence. This is also closely related to ethics and regulations, making it difficult to predict when AGI will arrive.
Key Highlights:
💡 Marc Raibert revealed that his institute has purchased robots from Unitree Robotics to test their capabilities.
🤖 He believes that understanding a competitor's technology is still important, despite the competition.
🌍 Marc Raibert emphasized that China's AI innovation is constantly developing, and more technological breakthroughs will emerge in the future.