An engineer that built this 400m-running humanoid robot explained the wild form:
▫️initially designed it with human arm swing
▫️but swinging arms too much put heavy load on shoulder joints, led to overheating (and robot couldn’t finish 400m)
▫️robot invented the new running style on its own (hands held up near face to reduce shoulder load while legs could keep trucking)
▫️per Global Times, “in a simulated learning environment…the team gave the robot continuous rewards, and through repeated iteration on the data it gradually settled into a posture that suited it better.”
***
Full read here (fascinating): https://t.co/hfd7PCRIqM
Not a great start to a new week
Seedance 2.5
Prompt 👇
GIRL = MAIN CHARACTER: Young Korean woman in her early 20s, natural appearance, black wavy hair loosely tied into a messy side ponytail, fitted pastel-blue short top, loose white pajama pants, simple silver necklace and casual flat sandals. Realistic skin texture, minimal makeup, authentic facial expressions, natural body movement and completely consistent identity throughout.
LOCATION: Peaceful Korean residential neighborhood on a warm summer morning. Narrow concrete lane, small homes, old concrete walls, potted plants, bicycles, utility poles, overhead wires, laundry hanging outside houses and a small neighborhood convenience store nearby.
CAMERA / LOOK: Early-2000s handheld DV camcorder operated by a friend. Strong natural camera shake, drifting composition, autofocus hunting, faded colors, soft digital image, exposure shifts, occasional motion blur, compression noise and imperfect accidental zooms. No polished modern cinematography.
SEQUENCE:
She steps outside her house carrying a small reusable shopping bag.
She locks the door and walks casually down the narrow lane toward the nearby neighborhood store.
A few school children walk past wearing backpacks on their way to school.
She smiles, waves and says, “Good morning!”
The children happily wave back and continue toward school.
She reaches the small store, buys a carton of milk and places it carefully inside her shopping bag.
She steps back outside and starts walking home through the same quiet lane.
Everything seems completely normal.
A few moments later, she suddenly feels something strange under her foot.
She stops.
Looks down.
The strap on her sandal has come loose.
She tries to push it back into place with her fingers.
It slips out again.
She crouches down and tries another way to fix it.
The strap refuses to stay attached.
She looks at the broken sandal in disbelief.
Her friend zooms awkwardly toward her.
She laughs and makes one final attempt to repair it.
The strap immediately pops loose again.
She gives up.
She takes off both sandals, holds them together in one hand, keeps the milk bag in the other, and continues walking barefoot down the lane.
The same school children from earlier are now farther down the street. They notice her carrying her sandals and smile.
She laughs and waves at them.
She continues walking toward home, barefoot and completely unbothered.
Her friend follows behind with the shaky camera.
She turns toward the camera, laughs and says:
“I only went out for milk.”
She keeps walking barefoot as the camera slowly follows her down the sunny lane.
AUDIO: Birds, footsteps on concrete, bicycle bells, distant children, light neighborhood conversations, soft traffic, store door chime and natural residential ambience. No music, no narration.
Warm summer morning sunlight, nostalgic early-2000s DV colors, authentic handheld imperfections, realistic sandal physics, natural expressions, subtle everyday humor, candid neighborhood energy and photorealistic Seedance 2.5 quality.