A crowd of spectators enthusiastic about a show featuring robots wearing red suits… and then a brief movement of panic. In a short sequence viewed up to 1.5 million times on X, a humanoid appears to lose control and attempt to hit someone in the crowd. Most accounts relaying the video are concerned about this “first assault by an AI robot on a human in China.” Others say it is a “quick glimpse of what the future holds for us all” and portray the video as a “robot revolt.”
AI robot tried to attack people at Chinese festival pic.twitter.com/Sy97PkX7VX
— Gadget X Tech (@gadgetech94) February 25, 2025The scene is authentic and took place during a festival in Taishan, China, on February 15th for the Chinese New Year celebrations. The same robots, H1 models from the Chinese company Unitree, are seen wearing the famous red costumes and performing a few dance steps. However, studying the images of this show allows us to understand a little better what really happened.
A robot running into an obstacle
The majority of videos were filmed by viewers and posted on the social network Douyin (Chinese TikTok), showing robots capable of performing basic tasks such as dancing or greeting the crowd. We also discover that in most of the sequences, the robots are surrounded by large security cordons to keep the public at a distance and let them carry out their actions. They are often escorted by security agents to help them go down stairs or supervise them.
“In this video, we are not at all in a configuration where the robot is going to hit someone: it does not move its arms significantly,” explains to TF1info Jean-Baptiste Mouret, engineer and researcher in robotics and artificial intelligence at INRIA. “We have a robot that is moving straight ahead and encounters a barrier. This is a failure of perception by the robot that did not see an obstacle.”
And indeed, in this video, we can see barriers behind which the public gathers with diagonal bars and a shelf where bottles of water are placed. We can also see the people in front of whom the robot seems to hit. It is at this level and on this projection that the robot stumbles before being restrained by security personnel. Everything, therefore, points to an “accident” as the festival organizers reported to the Chinese press. The Verifiers team also contacted the Unitree company to find out more. The latter has not yet responded to this incident.
“A robot can’t lose its mind.” says Kathleen Belhassein, a researcher
Beyond what we can see in this video, has a robot ever lost control of itself and decided to hit a human? “To my knowledge, a robot has never been able to make this type of violent gesture in a way that the operator did not want,” says Kathleen Belhassein, a doctor of psychology specializing in human-robot interactions. “A robot cannot consciously ‘lose its pedals’ and hit someone without it being explicitly coded in its algorithms.” The researcher specifies that this type of robot managed by artificial intelligence is not connected to databases on the Internet, such as ChatGPT, which is much more unpredictable
“A robot doesn’t take initiative,” says Jean-Baptiste Mouret. “Sometimes it does something ‘stupid’ because it hasn’t understood what’s going on around it and because it wants to achieve its goal.” This can notably be due to an error of perception, such as when its camera is dazzled, leading to an unexpected movement and therefore perceived as violent. The researcher also explains that it is rather risky to use robots in show configurations in the middle of a crowd, precisely for these reasons. On social networks, several examples exist, but each time they come from a robot error. The oldest dates back to 2016, when a small automaton accidentally broke a glass and injured a person.
Kungfu BOT: Unitree G1
We have continued to upgrade the Unitree G1's algorithm, enabling it to learn and perform virtually any movement. What other moves would you like to see. Do share with us in the comments. (Please keep a safe distance from the robot.)#Unitree #Kungfu… pic.twitter.com/1vDZHyRjqZ
— Unitree (@UnitreeRobotics) February 25, 2025The issue of potentially violent robots is also fueled by the fact that some manufacturers do not hesitate to stage their humanoids in combat demonstrations. This is precisely the case of the Unitree H1 robot, involved in the accident in this video, for which the company recently released a video(new window)where the automaton performs kung-fu gestures.
Power comparable to that of a child
“These videos are for demonstration purposes,” says Jean-Baptiste Mouret, who also specifies that currently “the power-to-weight ratio of a robot is quite low. We are more on the strength of a child” for robots like the Unitree one. But if a robot cannot strike on its own, unless it has instructions, the experts interviewed agree on the fact that this power-to-weight ratio could strongly evolve in favor of objects in the years to come and make these humanoid robots more robust.