Unitree Robotics has announced that its G1 robot is going into mass production for consumer sales. You can buy one for only $16,000! Let's see what this little (4' 4") robot can do. I see he can dance. It can walk on uneven terrain. But why would I spent $16K for a robot to do that? Can it reliably load my dishwasher? Can it drive? We see from the video that teh G1 can manipulate things with its hands, because it gives us the example of crushing nuts. If that's supposed to be a metaphor, it's not going to sell robots. Besides, if you look at that scene slowly in full-screen mode, you'll see that the nuts are already cracked. CNET gives us a review as best they can, considering all they have to go by is a promotional video. They mainly compare the price of the G1 to other much more expensive robots that you may be more familiar with. I don't believe they will sell a lot of humanoid robots until they can be seen doing something we need them to do. We already have robots to do heavy lifting and manufacturing; they just don't look like humans and don't dance so well. -via Born in Space