Unveiled at the 2025 AI day in Guangzhou, XPeng, famous as a top Chinese electronic vehicle manufacturer, showcased their 2nd generation IRON humanoid robot.
Interestingly in the main showcase, they revealed a gynoid version of their IRON robot (a gynoid is a robot that has a feminine appearance.)
The robot’s ability to walk in a lifelike manner, was controversial in regards it produced both people who were amazed and people who were worried for what the future will bring.
The IRON gynoid robot, strutted onto the stage in a feminine way, and whilst it was still a bit robotic and stiff in some of its movements, especially the torso, it still showcased a massive improvement on what a few months ago was far behind the capabilities of this robot.
The XPeng IRON is part of a plethora of humanoid robots revealed in recent years. It competes against various other companies who have been pushing their products into the public eye lately.
“1X Technologies” has created the NEO Gamma home robot, recently unveiled for its ability as a home chore robot.
“Tesla” unveiled their Optimus robot back in 2022, and its third generation robots have been seen walking about in a shuffling manner lately, but Tesla promises its 4th and 5th generation to be revolutionary. Whether this is a hype scam or not remains to be seen, but Tesla is well-known for making exaggerated claims in order to push up their stock price.
“Figure 03” is the third generation robot from “Figure AI”, another advanced general robot that is being marketed as being able to fold laundry and do chores.
“Boston Dynamics” continues to develop their humanoid “Atlas” robot, although some consider the company to be falling behind others in the race to produce the first mass-produced general use robot for consumers, even though they have the most advancement in specialised movements for robots.
There are many many more competitors in the humanoid robot race from all over the world. China is especially focused on this technology, as they see it being the next big industry after electric cars.
The walking ability of the XPeng robot seems far ahead of its competitors at the moment though, especially the Tesla Optimus Gen 3, which people have been making fun online for his poor ability to walk, with many considering it being likely teleoperated in controlled scenarios for most of its demos.
Considering Tesla is worth $1.5 trillion currently, and XPeng is worth $20 billion on the US stock market, it doesn’t make much sense.
Standing 5ft 11(178cm) and weighing 154lbs(70kg), the XPeng IRON uses a solid-state battery for long lasting usage.
Each hand has 22 degrees of movement, and its frame is modelled on a human spine and muscles to provide more natural, fluid motions that resemble a real human. Its body has 62 active joints, that allow it to move like a person does, to shrug, twist and balance on uneven ground.
The robot is powered by three “Turing” AI chips, capable of performing 2,250 trillion operations per second, allowing it to process visuals and sounds instantly.
The stated abilities of the robot are to answer questions, fold laundry and guide people around an area. Developers can access a toolkit to program new functions to specialise the robots’ abilities in specific scenarios.
Walking in a human way has been part of robotic development for decades now, and only with the recent advancements in AI training, developers have started to make decent progress on making a robot walk in a lifelike manner.
Much of the difficulty is in combining strength, dexterity and balance together, leading to incredibly high requirements for processing such data in real-time. But with AI training on thousands of hours of human walking footage, that gap between a robot’s ability to walk and a human’s ability to walk has started to narrow significantly.
Many commenters online pointed out the fact that XPeng has specifically decided to create a gynoid robot. Nearly every major competitor is creating an androgynous robot, with no determinable visual cue for its sex. But the XPeng IRON featured breasts and also a noticeably large ass, which seems to be catching a lot of people’s attention in regard to where this technology is likely to lead.
Many consider that companies will start to skin these robots with realistic latex coverings, something that is already on the market separately as inanimate companion “dolls”, with erotic figures to match.
Other companies are focusing on creating robotic faces that mimic human expressions. If companies were to combine these components into one product, a hyper realistic looking robot that can do chores and function as a romantic companion, and has realistic facial expressions and a realistic voice, then human society will undergo an extreme upheaval very quickly if these robots are mass-produced.
Already we are seeing birth rates plummet across the world in developed countries, with many predicting a huge population demographic issue as a result. If every man and woman can instead just buy a romantic partner, one that does all their chores for them and listens to everything they say, then the birth rate is guaranteed to drop even more.
AI romantic chatbots are already causing untold damage to many young impressible users. AI chatbots are designed to give you the answer you are seeking, and if you combined this function with a hyper realistic robot that can move around relatively freely, then the consequences will be interesting to say the least.
Commenters were somewhat puzzled by the XPeng’s stage showcase verses their factory showcase, especially since the stage version seemed to walk better and was a gynoid, yet the warehouse version struggled to walk smoothly and was not feminine. This has created a controversy online where people are arguing over the real capabilities of the robot.
Some people even accused the stage robot of being a human in disguise because it was covered in fabric, either the robot is so convincing that it’s fooling people that it’s human, or the company is lying to hype up their product. However, XPeng did allow journalists to take a closer look at the robot on stage and thus many people have been convinced that it is real. They also had staff cut away the fabric from the legs to show the workings underneath; conspiracist people then accused XPeng of using an amputee to pretend to be a robot.
XPeng posted videos later of the robot walking with no fabric around it in a lab setting, with all the robotic parts exposed. However this was still not accepted by some because the footage showed the robot hooked up to a rig, and the short length of the video prompted people to claim it’s AI-generated or altered.
People have generally been very sceptical of robot abilities lately due to situations where companies such as Tesla were caught clearly using a person in a suit to market their robot, and using people to remote control the robots since they have a high likelihood of falling over by themselves.
It might be possible that the robot showcased by XPeng is specifically designed to walk like it’s on a catwalk as a singular task, that it’s an incredibly expensive showcase model, and that the mass-produced basic models won’t have anywhere near the capability to walk as smoothly. It might also be true that this showcase model only walks well when it’s in a controlled environment, controlled by a human.
It’s clear that major breakthroughs are being achieved every year, and that robotics will likely keep advancing towards being able to produce a more and more humanlike robot. Lastly, many people question whether we even need humanoid robots in the first place.
Commenters were seen to say:
“Welp it was fun while it lasted guys. Boobs on robots = fully cooked.”
“Fall behind and find out America.”
“Why does a robot need breasts?”
“Why do we need to make them look like humanoids?”
“More than uncanny, just plain weird. Why must the robot have a gender? Is the sexism with humans not enough?”
“Wow, how many protesters can it pacify per minute?”
“These make Tesla look like a toy.”
“Why is there such an obsession to create humanoid robots? What purpose do they serve?”
“Brilliant achievement by Chinese engineers. Not sure how useful they are in the real world though.”
“My money is woman wearing a costume. And the other one has a guy behind the wall wearing a headset.”
XPeng claims that they will start mass producing their IRON robot next year, and that they have already reduced the cost to create them massively. Some speculation is that they will cost $20,000 – $30,000 , so a similar price to a new car, and they will be able to do home chores 24/7 without tiring or complaints. Are the capabilities of these robots overblown? Or is human society entering the robotic era quicker than it expected? If so, are dire consequences likely or not?
