Chinese automotive company XPeng has been making a major splash with its Terminator-like humanoid robot, dubbed Iron.
Footage of the company’s announcement showed the robot sauntering across the stage with an incredibly lifelike gait. The CEO even peeled it open to show there wasn’t a human inside — hijinx previously pulled by Elon Musk’s Tesla and Chinese company Ex-Robots.
Another design choice that drew the attention of online pundits online: the robot’s distinctly female anatomy, including pronounced breasts and hips — a notable outlier in a field dominated by hulking, broad-shouldered robots with masculine-coded names like Atlas or Optimus.
“Why does it need boobs yet no face?” one Reddit user asked. “These things are mega creepy.”
Was it an attempt to further female representation — or is the company trying to lure a very specific demographic by sexualizing its robot?
As it turns out, rumors that XPeng may eventually sell the robot as a high-tech intimate companion aren’t entirely unfounded.
“We can see that Iron can have different body shapes and sexes,” CEO Xiaopeng He said during his keynote speech on November 5, as quoted by Mashable. “I suspect that just like [when] you buy a car, you can choose different colors, exterior, interior.”
“You can choose a little bit fatter Iron, or, like me, a slimmer Iron,” he added. “Or you can customize your Iron based on your preferences. We also offer you the full coverage soft skin, so the robot is warmer and also more intimate…”
He also admitted that the company would likely be able to sell more robots that are “good looking” and “more intimate.”
According to He, robots will become “life partners” and should therefore act “more like [an] intelligent human.”
The company intentionally chose to have Iron use a “catwalk-like, graceful gait” on stage, per the company’s press release. The robot has “82 degrees of freedom throughout the body” and “supports customization for different body shapes.”
Our read? For now, the company is looking to throw a host of different approaches at the wall to see what sticks.
“We see the different options because there are different kinds of humans,” XPeng Robotics Center vice president Liangchuan Mi said at last week’s event. “So we’re trying to see how people can react [to different form factors]… So we’ll see all kinds of feedback from people, and people may have different preferences when they put the robot into the workforce.”
There’s a fraught discussion surrounding the gender of inanimate objects, highlighting many deep biases in society.
“A lot of scenarios are designed for human beings in this world,” He told reporters after the event, as quoted by Mashable. “If the robot is more human-like then it’s [easier for] them to adapt to the real world.”
More on the robot: Robotics Company Builds Straight-Up Terminator