One of the best and most ridiculous robots of 2025 in photos

This hanging humanoid robotic is the R1 from Robbyant, an organization owned by Chinese language tech large Ant Group. The attract of humanoid robots is their versatility – you may think about them doing any job {that a} human can, just because they’ve the identical appendages.

However not like wheeled robots, they must take care of balancing on two legs, which isn’t any imply feat. The R1 strikes a stability, with a secure wheeled base and a humanoid kind from the waist up.

The R1 actually made a formidable entrance on the IFA 2025 tech present in Berlin, the place it demonstrated its abilities within the kitchen, cooking up shrimp – albeit at a really relaxed tempo. Its makers say it might be put to work as a carer, nurse or tour information.

This bipedal robotic, named Tiangong, is extra formidable than the R1 – however as this picture reveals, that hasn’t essentially paid off. The machine, constructed by Nationwide and Native Co-built Embodied AI Robotics Innovation Heart, was competing in a 100-metre race on the World Humanoid Robotic Video games in Beijing in August when it tripped and fell.

Different occasions on the video games included soccer and dance, and the Tiangong was certainly not the one robotic to undergo an harm: one other dropped out of the 1500-metre occasion as a result of its head got here off.

The Qatari authorities was compelled to ban the apply of utilizing youngster jockeys in camel races in 2005 after strain from campaigners, so followers turned to robots as a substitute.

Initially, the units had been rudimentary contraptions cobbled collectively from electrical drills and distant gate openers. They’ve grown extra refined over time, though they nonetheless quantity to little greater than remote-controlled whips to pressure camels to run sooner.

Right here, we see a race throughout an occasion organised by the Qatar Camel Racing Organising Committee in Al-Shahaniya, about 40 kilometres west of Doha, in January.

Some 12,000 people and 21 robots competed within the Beijing E-City Humanoid Robotic Half Marathon in April, seemingly the primary organised occasion to permit runners whether or not they’re made from flesh, steel or plastic.

Solely six of the robots completed the gap, however the winner, a Tiangong Extremely, got here in at a really respectable 2 hours 40 minutes – albeit with three full units of batteries, which is a privilege not afforded to human members.

One other occasion on the World Humanoid Robotic Video games noticed one of many first ever kickboxing bout between robots. The Unitree G1 robots that took half are relatively sluggish, so their blows had been extra like a delicate push than a knockout punch. Additionally they had a bent to fall over when attacking or defending themselves, however they a minimum of confirmed nice agility and tenacity by getting again on their ft.

This tadpole is actually a cyborg, with an digital implant embedded inside it as an embryo to observe the event of its neural exercise because it grows right into a frog.

Jia Liu at Harvard College and his colleagues used a comfortable materials known as perfluropolymer to construct a comfortable, stretchable mesh round ultra-thin conductors, which they then positioned onto the neural plate – the precursor to the mind – of African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) embryos. Because the neural plate folded and expanded, the ribbon-like mesh was subsumed into the rising mind, permitting the researchers to measure mind alerts.