I’ve been interested in robots for over 20 years and I can tell you with near 100% certainty that there is no reason for domestic humanoid robots to have breasts, much less walk down a runway like a model.
Things are getting a little weird, even weirder than usual, in the burgeoning humanoid robot space. First, Chinese electric vehicle maker XPeng unveiled IRON, a strangely feminized new humanoid robot that looked and moved so convincingly that the company was forced to partially strip the robot and cut away the foamy flesh to reveal the metal and motor beneath.
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A few days later, Russia finally joined the race for humanoid robots with, in hindsight, ironically named “Idol”. He came out from behind a curtain to the rhythm of the catchy rhythms of the Rocky theme, looking hunched and disconcerted before toppling over. The scene only got worse as handlers dragged the robot’s disconcerted body away and stagehands desperately tried to cover the scene with a twisted curtain.
I can’t help but laugh 😆 This is a presentation of Russia’s first AI robot. I think he learned how to walk from alcoholics. pic.twitter.com/bd5M58c6rjNovember 11, 2025
In both cases, roboticists remind us once again of the risks and difficulties associated with entering the robot race. These companies already face stiff and possibly exciting competition from nearly half a dozen other companies, including Tesla with the latest dancing Optimus (he was last seen moving with Tesla CEO Elon Musk), 1X Neo Beta, which is being peddled in ads outside New York City subways, Unitree’s G1, and Figure AI’s Figure 03.
While none of these robots are home-ready, they mostly avoid the pitfalls of IRON and XPeng’s Idol.
Sure, Neo Beta now has a nice soft coating, but he’s clearly built like an asexual being and doesn’t wiggle his hips to confuse you. Most of the time he plods along trying to slowly help with the cleaning chores around the house. Although it’s unclear whether it can accomplish any of them without a teleconnected human operator.
Robots like Optimus and Figure 03 are just catching up to the mobility skills of Boston Dynamics Atlas; they are now all able to walk across the room waving. Russia’s Idol arrives like a robot built 15 years ago. I haven’t seen such a spectacular and viral robot fail since Honda Asimo fell down a small flight of stairs in 2007.
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Humanoid robotics in the broad sense, however, East difficult things. The Russians and the Chinese face two very different problems: breaking commitments and overpromising.
In IRON’s case, they built an impressive robot with a “humanoid spine”, flexible “skin”, and local AI, but with no real explanation for why it looks and walks like a 1980s fashion model. This, perhaps inadvertently, ups the creepy factor with an all-too-human look and feel (blech).
Watching the executives cut away this strange foam of flesh gave me very unfortunate cheesy 1970s sci-fi movie feels. It was all so unnecessary for a robot that will probably never look like this if and when it finally arrives a decade from now.
As for Russia’s Idol, I don’t know what to think of this underperforming robot. Perhaps Russia is now so cut off from the Western press that it no longer knows the state of the art of humanoid robots. I’ve never seen a robot so confused. Even he seemed to wonder why he was there.
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