China's new Walker S2 humanoid robot is capable of working without human intervention almost indefinitely.
In news that has certainly been raising a few eyebrows this week, it seems that autonomous, humanoid robots no longer need to stop and recharge - they can now keep going 24/7.
Designed by Chinese company UBTECH, the Walker S2 has a novel feature that completely removes the need for it to go into sleep mode while its batteries recharge.
Instead, it simply walks over to a battery recharge station, removes its own battery, places it in the charger, then picks up another fully charged battery and slots it back into its own body.
This mechanism basically enables the robot to keep working without ever needing to stop.
To make this possible, the robot actually has two batteries so that when it takes one out, it can keep functioning long enough to put a charged one back in.
The Walker S2 is mainly designed for performing tasks in factories or for interacting with members of the public at venues.
Suffice to say, being able to change its own battery means that - for the first time - we now have a robot that is almost entirely autonomous (providing it has a working battery charging station to use).
No doubt, this type of system will become a lot more commonplace over the next few years.