Forget valleys; we're now entering veritable Grand Canyons of uncanniness.

Behold the robot known as "Protoclone," built by Clone Robotics. It's supposedly the world's first bipedal, musculoskeletal android. But it's mostly just got people extremely creeped out.

In a promotional video shared on X this Wednesday, the startup — of which little is known — makes every effort possible to subvert the industry's favored image of robots as servile little helpers there for the good of humankind.

Nope. With a menacing cinematic score, we're presented with this writhing, cadaverous mass, shorn of a recognizable face, blindly grasping at the world it didn't want to be brought into. A totally unsolicited reminder that we, too, are merely the supple impedimenta playing host to a network of electrical pulses. Or something.

Clearly the intent here is to shock, perhaps in lieu of sharing something more substantive. In any case, it worked: the video has gone instantly viral, spawning equal parts alarm and dark humor — plus plenty of comparisons to the TV show "Westworld."

"We should hook this thing up to a supercomputer miles below the surface of the earth and hang it up on meathooks and send searing hot sharp pain to every nerve ending in its body and make it handle simple computational tasks that are essential to the functioning of our society," one user joked.

Jitters aside, what actually is this thing? Here's what the startup claims. "The Protoclone is a faceless, anatomically accurate synthetic human with over 200 degrees of freedom, over 1,000 Myofibers, and 500 sensors," Clone Robotics said in a followup post.

According to its website, the android is equipped with the world's most sophisticated hydraulic powering system mimicking our human blood vessels. Its muscles are composed of Clone's proprietary "Myofiber" artificial muscle tech, providing an unparalleled combination of "weight, power density, speed, force-to-weight, and energy efficiency," Clone says. Underneath, the robot possesses a human-like skeleton with analogs for all 206 bones of the human body. It can also see using four cameras installed in its skull.

Clone co-founder Dhanush Radhakrishna — whose display name is "Necromancer" — calls the robot's progress "ground zero for the age of androids."

Needless to say, it's worth approaching these claims with healthy skepticism. So far, all we've seen is a video of the robot flailing around uselessly — and the android industry, after all, has never been above misleading public stunts.

And calling it the world's first bipedal, musculoskeletal android is also dubious, notes robotics blogger Mike Kalil. That title arguably goes to the Japanese robot Kengoro built in 2016, famed for its cooling system that lets it sweat like a human and its ability to crank out loads of push-ups.

But if you buy into the hype, there's good news. Clone Robotics says it'll start doing pre-orders for just 279 units of its "Clone Alpha" robot this year, which it advertises as capable of doing a bunch of household chores. Reserve your unnerving humanoid now!

More on robots: Military Robot Deployed as Nightclub DJ


Share This Article