After showcasing its next-generation humanoid robot at the 2025 Artificial Intelligence Day, Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng released new footage of their latest creation, the Iron robot, performing a dance routine in lab conditions. This video highlights a streamlined version of the robot, intended for research and development, and aims to demonstrate the ‘advanced technologies’ underlying its human-like gait. The robot’s movements have sparked lively discussions online over the past week.
The short video shows off the robot’s flexibility with its 82 degrees of freedom as it dances. More importantly, He Xiaopeng elaborates on a novel AI training methodology that significantly accelerates the learning process.
A frame from the video displays how ‘We’ve implemented a comprehensive learning method that imitates human training,’ explained He Xiaopeng. ‘By inputting data from human dance, the device can immediately learn the corresponding movements.’
He asserts that the dance sequence demonstrated in the video was mastered in just ‘two hours.’ This, he claims, marks a dramatic leap forward from previous methods. ‘Previously, reinforcement learning took us weeks and lacked any form of generalization,’ he remarked. ‘In the environment of the new large model, Iron can surely perform more actions, more generalized, and more human-like.’
During the presentation, the robot’s leg was cut open to demonstrate that it indeed wasn’t a person. [New footage] also offers a clearer explanation of the ‘model-like’ gait shown during the AI Day presentation, which was so fluid that some observers speculated it may have been a human in a suit. The CEO directly links the robot’s convincing hip sway to new hardware developments.
A frame from the video attributes this to ‘We added a human-like spine construction, which increases the degrees of freedom in the robot’s waist area,’ he announced. ‘Thus, its movement can manipulate the hip joint, creating a motion akin to human joint movement.’
This ‘human spine’ was one of several new hardware features, alongside ‘dexterous hands’ and a fully solid-state battery, unveiled by Xpeng during the AI Day presentation.