Humanoid robots still struggle to accomplish real-world tasks with human-level dexterity. At the airport, though, they’ve already proven perfectly capable of matching human incompetence.
A wild story out of Oakland, California shows what happens when you try to force a humanoid robot to fly coach. During a trip from Oakland to San Diego, a team of workers with the rental company Elite Event Robotics was traveling with Bebop, a 77-pound robot that appears to be a Unitree G1.
To get from Oakland to San Diego is a 7.5 hour drive, so it can make sense to fly. Yet when the team rolled up with Bebop in toe, Southwest told them they couldn’t check the robot as luggage due to weight restrictions. Failing that, they bought the bot its own seat on the plane, and that’s where the trouble began.
As the robot’s handlers tell it, flight attendants were — rightfully — concerned with how well the robot would behave on the flight.
“They come and start asking, ‘what kind of batteries does it have? What’s going on with this? X, Y, and Z.’ They want to see it,” Elite Event Robotics staffer Ben-Abraham told local media. “Meanwhile, I’m watching his flight, and I keep seeing online: ‘runway delay.'”
Apparently, that back-and-forth lasted over an hour, during which the plane was stuck idling on the runway. In the end, Southwest confiscated Bebop’s lithium battery, arguing that it broke the airline’s size limit.
It’s likely the first flight delay caused by a humanoid robot — a dubious distinction for any startup.
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