Robotics and humanoid robotics & civilian drones discussion

siegecrossbow

Field Marshall
Staff member
Super Moderator
Failing to see the advantage of that over a, er, horse.
Actually plenty of advantages over an actual horse.

1) it does pee or poop.
2) it doesn’t need training.
3) it doesn’t get pissed and throw its owner.
4) it doesn’t need hoof maintenance.
5) if one of the legs break you just replace it instead of having to put it down.

In short, it is superior to a horse in almost every way other than competently carry a rider… :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 

Kalum Pupeter

Junior Member
Registered Member
US company Nvidia has positioned itself as a major player in the robotics space, providing key tools for development work. Most major Chinese players are working with its products in some way. Nvidia’s Jetson modules are designed to be embedded in AI robots, combining its Blackwell GPUs, Isaac development platform, plus other capabilities such as sensor signal processing. Chinese robotics companies UBTech, Galbot, Unitree, EngineAI and AgiBot were among the first to receive the latest Jetson Thor module. Nvidia is gaining traction as an essential supplier of key building blocks of the oncoming robotics revolution, as it has in generative AI.

The strong dependence on the Nvidia ecosystem poses risks for the nascent industry in China
. The GPUs used in Jetson modules have strong computation powers but relatively low memory bandwidth and lack the ability to connect to other chips, capabilities that are crucial for model training in data centers. These types of edge computing chips have not been the focus of the US export control scheme, but as they become more powerful, and as the robotics revolution wears on, that may yet change.

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China’s very nascent embodied robotics industry is like a high-speed train making itself dangerously dependent on foundational building blocks such as Nvidia’s software and chips. Where is Beijing when it needs to step in and regulate this dependency? Why do Chinese entrepreneurs remain so stubbornly dependent on hostile states for critical hardware and software, even after everything we’ve seen since 2018? Disgraceful.

MER-05-infografik-NVIDIA-chart-260408.png
 
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iewgnem

Captain
Registered Member
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China’s very nascent embodied robotics industry is like a high-speed train making itself dangerously dependent on foundational building blocks such as Nvidia’s software and chips. Where is Beijing when it needs to step in and regulate this dependency? Why do Chinese entrepreneurs remain so stubbornly dependent on hostile states for critical hardware and software, even after everything we’ve seen since 2018? Disgraceful.
I mean, it's 2026 already, how long TSMC can be considered "hostile state" to PRC, vs how long they can be considered non-hostile to the US might not be as clear cut as people might think, especially considering how US is doing in the Iran War,
 

Mar ling

New Member
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China’s very nascent embodied robotics industry is like a high-speed train making itself dangerously dependent on foundational building blocks such as Nvidia’s software and chips. Where is Beijing when it needs to step in and regulate this dependency? Why do Chinese entrepreneurs remain so stubbornly dependent on hostile states for critical hardware and software, even after everything we’ve seen since 2018? Disgraceful.

MER-05-infografik-NVIDIA-chart-260408.png
Be relaxed, allow the robot's own sports ability, which only requires a basic ARM Cortex-A72, Nvidia chips are only mentioned to solve more complex problems. Meanwhile, DeepSeek's story tells us that using domestic chips switchover is not as complex as we imagine.
 

bd popeye

The Last Jedi
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Wang Tingting observes a robot writing in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, April 21, 2026. Inside the training ground of a bionic robot innovation center, robot engineer Wang Tingting, wearing motion-capture equipment, guided bionic robots through tasks such as grasping, walking and laying. The robots undergo stages including action demonstration, data collection, precise calibration, and repeated error correction.

What appears to be a simple sorting action requires Wang Tingting to repeat it hundreds of times to ensure the robots operate accurately, stably, and safely in real environments. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)

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Wang Tingting adjust robots with her colleagues in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, April 21, 2026. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)

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Wang Tingting adjusts a robot in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, April 21, 2026. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)

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Wang Tingting puts on motion capture equipment in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, April 21, 2026. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)

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Wang Tingting operates a robot in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, April 21, 2026. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)

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Wang Tingting trains a robot to pick up components in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, April 21, 2026. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)
 

Heresy

Junior Member
Registered Member
Once DJT bans NVIDIA sales to China the domestic solution will be ready in a year or so.

I don't think the concern is whether China would have access to NVIDIA chips. I think the bigger question is that these NVIDIA chips would represent a potential national security concern should these robots ever be used in anything (or anywhere) remotely sensitive.

Imagine if NVIDIA embeds a backdoor that allows the NSA to at best, use your robot to gather information about it's surroundings or about some part of it's code, or at worst to cause it to detonate or cause as much damage to anything around it, or to kill as many people around it.
 
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