China showed a sci-fi movie robot! It disarms an attacker with a knife, lifts the car, and its kicks smash the bodywork

Chinese robotics manufacturer Unitree from Changzhou released a video for its new humanoid H2-X, presenting it as a guard capable of protecting you from both an attacker and an accident. In the video, the robot disarms a knife-wielding robber, lifts the car under which a person is lying, and kicks away a child mannequin in front of an oncoming car. The video is only on the social network X and within two days it has racked up over 8 million views, but Unitree has surprisingly shared very little about it.

A kung-fu legend that’s meant to guard you

A one-minute video titled „Kung Fu Legend Guardian“ begins at a night scrapyard, where the H2-X kicks car doors, smashes the hood with its fists, and leaves huge dents in the metal. Later, it jumps onto a platform four meters high, walks through a shower of sparks, and between piles of wrecks shows jumping kicks. In the footage, Unitree emphasizes that these are real recordings without acceleration.

Then a masked man with a knife sneaks up on the woman sitting in front of the house. The H2-X steps between them, disarms the attacker, and drives him away.

In the next scene, a man lies under a car. The robot lifts the car by the front bumper, and an assistant pulls the injured man out from underneath. At the end of the video, the H2-X shoves a child mannequin out of the way—one that would otherwise be hit by the passing car.

It can stand for eight hours; the rest is a mystery

The only concrete information Unitree has shared about the H2-X is runtime: it should be able to stand for approximately eight hours. How long it will last while running or fighting, how big its battery is, how much it will cost, and when it will go on sale—none of that has been said. According to the portal Interesting Engineering, the H2-X is based on the already existing humanoid H2, which measures about 1.8 meters, weighs 70 kg, has 31 degrees of freedom, and even in the ankle joints it delivers a twisting torque of up to 360 Nm. Whether the H2-X has the same motors and sensors, or stronger ones, however, Unitree hasn’t confirmed.

The biggest question is whether the robot in the ad acted on its own. Unitree didn’t explain how H2-X would distinguish an attacker from a family member who forgot their keys, nor whether it was controlled remotely by a human during filming, or whether it was simply a choreographed sequence programmed in advance. Last month, the company also introduced an AI model UnifoLM-X2-1.0, which its humanoids are meant to handle independently—so delivering strikes, blocking, and dodging.

Unitree: “Don’t imitate” and keep your distance 2 to 3 meters

At the end of the video, Unitree clearly distances itself from the action scenes. It labels them as extreme testing that shouldn’t be imitated, and a knife or other props in the scenes—according to the caption—are just props. It also recommends robot owners keep at least two to three meters away from it, don’t modify it in any way, and don’t use it in a dangerous manner. Under the video, it additionally asks people to use the robot “safely and friendly.”

The US site Gizmodo summed it up with some perspective: Unitree hasn’t come up with a robot that would safely distinguish a robber from a husband who lost the keys, but it has created a robot that convincingly plays the hero in such an ad. Back at the February Chinese TV New Year gala, meanwhile, Unitree humanoids just harmlessly demonstrated strikes and kicks with a stick.

Would you want a guard like that?

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