World’s First Fully Automated Carpet-Cleaning Robot Revolutionizes “Hands-off” CleaningWorld’s First Fully Automated Carpet-Cleaning Robot Revolutionizes “Hands-off” CleaningWorld’s First Fully Automated Carpet-Cleaning Robot Revolutionizes “Hands-off” Cleaning AnaTech Maz Technology Magazine
 
  1. Home
  2. Future Technologies
  3. Robotics

Watch: Hyper-Realistic Robot Revealed as Machine in Shocking Dissection

Priyadharshini S November 25, 2025 | 1:29 PM Technology

When Xpeng unveiled its next-gen Iron humanoid earlier this month, it stole headlines – though not quite in the way the company had intended. As the robot glided down the runway with startlingly human-like fluidity, the audience was convinced someone was secretly controlling it from inside.

Figure 1. Watch: Lifelike Humanoid Robot Cut Open to Prove It’s Not Human.

Just 24 hours after the robot’s debut at the 2025 AI Day in Guangzhou, CEO He Xiaopeng and his team returned to the stage to silence the skeptics – by literally cutting Iron open. For the multibillionaire, it was a “last-resort solution,” but he hoped that slicing into its clothed leg to reveal the machinery within would finally put the debate to rest. Figure 1 shows Watch: Lifelike Humanoid Robot Cut Open to Prove It’s Not Human.

“Our robotics team felt quite wronged – they didn’t sleep all night, and they didn’t let me sleep either,” he said from the stage. After the dramatic reveal, he added with a grin, “We believe we don’t need any more proof,” as Iron strutted across the stage once again.

Next-Gen Iron marks a significant leap from the 2024 model that first announced Xpeng’s expansion from electric vehicles into AI and robotics. The new humanoid features a spine-like structure, bionic muscles, and fully covered flexible skin—intact, that is, until it meets a pair of scissors. Its remarkable flexibility comes from 82 degrees of freedom throughout its body, plus what the company claims is the industry’s smallest “harmonic joint” in its human-sized hands, offering 22 degrees of freedom.

Under the hood, iron runs on all-solid-state batteries that combine high power with light weight. It is powered by Xpeng’s second-generation VLA (Vision-Language-Action) model, supported by three in-house Turing AI chips delivering 2,250 TOPS of computing power. This enables the humanoid to perform tasks like walking, conversing, and interacting with humans or other robots—but in a way that feels strikingly human rather than mechanical.

It’s worth noting the obvious: while these models feature human-like anatomy, they’re clearly inspired by a Hollywood-style template of the human form. Still, the company says future versions will be fully customizable to accommodate different body shapes once they enter public production.

For fans of 2016’s Westworld, the comparisons are hard to ignore. It’s not difficult to imagine an interactive, open-world theme park in China staffed by a cast of Irons. He revealed on stage that the robots are slated for rollout in 2026, intended for commercial and public service roles such as tour guides and sales clerks.

“At the monetization stage, Xpeng’s Next-Gen Iron will focus on commercial applications, offering services such as guided tours, shopping assistance, and traffic management,” the company stated.

Reports indicate that Elon Musk, who has been promoting his delayed Optimus humanoid project this month, remarked, “Not bad … Tesla and Chinese companies will dominate the market. Other companies in the West are weak,” according to Chinese media outlet Sohu.

Source: NEW ATLAS

Cite this article:

Priyadharshini S (2025), Watch: Hyper-Realistic Robot Revealed as Machine in Shocking Dissection, AnaTechMaz, pp.297

Recent Post

Blog Archive

Popular Lnks