"Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting" – including the humanoid robot Unitree G1
Unitree has expanded the martial arts repertoire of its humanoid robot G1 – with a range of acrobatic abilities.
The Unitree G1 tries its hand at Kung Fu moves.
(Image: Unitree Robotics)
Chinese robotics company Unitree Robotics has taught its humanoid robot G1 some new Kung Fu techniques, such as backflips, spins, rolls, and various martial arts moves like punches and kicks. Apparently, further progress has been made in the robot's embodied intelligence.
In the video, Unitree shows how the humanoid G1 robot, standing 1.65 m tall, performs complex martial arts movements. The robotics company emphasizes that all sequences in the video are played back at normal speed. The robot's actuators show high positioning speed, and the balance control, including full-body sensing, demonstrates a high reaction time.
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The movements of the body, with a total of 31 degrees of freedom (excluding hands), are largely fluid. The robot barely wobbles even during fast kicks, aerial spins, and backflips, always recovers, and re-establishes its balance independently. However, the displayed sequences should be viewed with some caution: Robotics companies usually only showcase something publicly when it has worked.
Kung Fu Training
To learn new movements, Unitree uses an open-source full-body dataset. A variety of motion data was recorded using the LAFAN1 motion capture technique. The data considers, for example, the end-position limitations of the robot actuators and joints, as well as speed limitations. The robot training itself takes place virtually first, before the training data is transferred to the physical robot.
Already in February 2025, Unitree had shown, how the G1 performs Kung Fu movements. At that time, however, the movements were significantly more limited. For example, the robot could only perform a one-legged spin and apply a few hand and arm techniques.
(olb)
