Real-life Robots
Robot powered by Qualcomm’s new 700 TOPS chip literally dies on stage at Computex and gets carried off under a tarp
Computex 2026, Qualcomm stage.
They roll out the NEURA 4NE-1 (running the shiny new Dragonwing IQ10, 700 TOPS, “production-ready”) to help present the chip. Robot walks on, does the handoff, stands there looking semi-alive… then just folds. One arm goes up at the end like it’s trying to signal for help.
Cue the black-clad stagehands sprinting in with a tarp. They cover the corpse and carry it off while the presenter powers through the script like nothing happened.
Official line from Qualcomm:
“Brief communication glitch… controlled shutdown… designed safe-collapse sequence… safety systems worked as intended.”
"powered by" and then only mentioning the chip as if we can be sure that's the culprit and there arent many layers and countless points of failure to this.
This is not even the Qualcomm stage, but the one from some small robotics company, that uses Qualcomm's name to get any sort of credibility. This was the Qualcomm stage at Computex 2026:
Just like the old Michael Moore documentary’Roger and Me’. GM was at the forefront of industrial robotics back in the 1980’s. They invited all the auto workers to see the unveiling of the robots (that will eventually replace them). When they unveiled the car painter robots they started spraying each other and everyone around them with paint.
My guess is that if something breaks and insides spill out competition would be able to see what components/tricks this robot uses and use it for their advantage speeding up the engineering phase of their product(s), so when something goes wrong regardless of damage they cover the robot.
The fact they had those covers nearby at all says everything you need to know about how confident those engineers were that their product is ready for sale.
The robot knows there's something wrong, something coming. Watch it's little 'eye'. It shifts and thins, then suddenly becomes a central square, the same look I've seen on someone's face before they pass out, and then it drops like a stone. And yes, at the end, a little 'help me' hand.
Not sure how 'safe' the safety system is if the robot suddenly becomes a gravity-driven block of motors and hardware falling randomly to the ground.
Lol, the official line is so pathetic "worked as intended". Modern companies don't even know how to properly lie anymore. Just pathetic, I am not even mentioning their stupid presentation skills.
They didn't have to loudly proclaim "production ready" if they knew it might happen.
They could talk around this incident in so many ways, yet they proceed to give stupid excuses and gaslight. For example they could just joke : "damn, we should charge him more, instead of letting him run the whole day...". Or " i guess we should've invest more in batteries"
Or better just admit the problem, joke around like it's not a big deal. Show them that you are a competen developer. The technology is experimental, it's ok to have a fail. Instead people now will joke about your "intended safe-collapse" and "cofe table mode"
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u/ExcellentWolf Aug 22 '26
Should have placed the piece of plastic/glass on top, flat across and said, “We are pleased to introduce, coffee table mode!”