A hooded man with a knife walks toward a woman sitting in her backyard. Before he reaches her, a humanoid robot steps between them and squares up. That’s the money shot in the one-minute video Unitree released on October 21 to introduce the H2-X, aka “Kung Fu Legend Guardian.”

It’s a machine that, in the company’s words, offers “powerful performance to serve and guard you.” It’s a robot that a lot of people will want at home: the T-800 to their John Connor. If the robot actually exists as the Chinese robot maker imagines it, this will be a mess. 

A combat-trained, metal-smashing, bone-breaking robot drags one of the nastiest unsolved problems of battlefield AI straight into the living room. Can autonomous robots really tell friend from foe? Short answer: No. Not yet. And perhaps it will never happen, the same way humans can’t always tell.

The video, which Unitree swears was shot for real and not sped up, opens in a junkyard at night. The robot springs up on top of a parked sedan, somersaults off it, kicks and knees a door until it buckles, and lands a flying kick on the hood. Then it drops from a platform marked as 13 feet high, rolls to soak up the impact, and stands back up into a string of side kicks and backflips.

The second half is where the “guardian” part comes in: the man with the knife. After the knife scene, the H2-X holds up the front of a car while someone pulls a dummy out from underneath, and shoves a child mannequin clear of an oncoming car, taking the hit itself.

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