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Unitree Robotics' G1 Robot Showcases Impressive Flips and Agility Advancements

Robotics

Business Honor
27 March, 2025

Unitree’s G1 robot performs side flips, kick-ups, and tai chi, rivaling Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot.

A Zhejiang-based firm called Unitree Robotics has surprised the globe with its G1 humanoid robot's side-flip and kick-up capabilities. It is a significant improvement over the backflip performed by the H1 robot a year earlier. The business posted a video of its G1 robot standing and doing a side flip on March 19. Another video demonstrating how its G1 robot "nails the world's first kip-up," or kick-up, was posted last Friday. After being kicked in the back, the robot can also balance itself and perform sweeping kicks and tai chi.

American competitor Boston Dynamics released a video of its Atlas robot performing cartwheels and breakdance sweeps after Unitree G1's side-flip video. The work was completed as part of the company's research collaboration with the Robotics and AI Institute (RAI Institute), according to the company. According to all the footage that is now accessible, robot enthusiasts have observed that Boston Dynamics' Atlas and Unitree's G1 have distinct advantages: Atlas can perform practical jobs more accurately, while G1 is lighter, less expensive, and more nimble. They concluded that Boston Dynamics' robots are more sophisticated due to the company's decades of experience.

However, with the development of Nvidia's Isaac Sim technology over the past year, the technological difference between Chinese and American humanoid robots has decreased. Nvidia's website states that Isaac Sim is an application based on Nvidia Omniverse that lets programmers test and simulates AI-powered robotic solutions in virtual worlds that are physically based.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 graphics processing unit (GPU) is required for a machine to run the most recent version of Isaac Sim well. Since the Biden administration only prohibited the shipment of RTX 4090 and later models to China in October 2023, Chinese businesses are currently free to import as many RTX 4080s as they like.