November 17, 2025 by David Edwards

Russia's ambitions in the global humanoid robot race suffered a very public stumble last week when its newly-unveiled robot fell flat on its face during its debut appearance in Moscow. (See video below.)

At a technology event, the Russian startup Artificial Intelligence Dynamic Organism Lab led out its eponymous humanoid robot, dubbed“AIDOL”, to the soundtrack of the Rocky theme, but the machine lost its balance after only a few steps and collapsed front-first on stage.

The incident speaks to how far Russia may still have to go to match other leaders in the industrial humanoid sector. While the USA and China (and to a lesser extent Europe) are advancing prototypes and preparing for commercial scale, this fall suggests that Russia's earliest mass-market humanoid efforts remain at a nascent stage.

AIDOL's creators say the project is self-funded, with a 14-person team and no major government or corporate backers.

AIDOL was introduced by the startup as the“first Russian anthropomorphic robot with AI” and claimed to support full facial expressions and offline contextual dialogue. The company said the fall was down to“calibration issues” and that it is part of ongoing development.

Technical setbacks are common in robotics, but the moment quickly went viral, drawing wide commentary that Russia still lacks globally competitive consumer or industrial robot brands.

The event underlined the gap between ambition and execution in Russia's robotics ecosystem – and reinforced how much room remains in the humanoid market for entrants that can scale reliably, worldwide.

Main image via Business Insider

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