NEO's ''Culinary Bootcamp'' Video Is a Perfect Demo of 1X's Human-in-the-Loop Strategy

Following a sweet collaboration with star chef Amaury Guichon, 1X is continuing its high-profile culinary marketing tour. This time, the company has partnered with one of YouTube's biggest food creators, Nick DiGiovanni, for a 27-minute "culinary bootcamp."

The video, which has already amassed over 4 million views, puts the NEO humanoid through a series of challenges, from baseline tests (cracking an egg, flipping a pancake) to a final boss battle: making spaghetti and meatballs from scratch in 60 minutes.

While highly entertaining, the video serves as one of the clearest and longest public demonstrations of 1X's controversial "Expert Mode". DiGiovanni's video description is transparent about this, stating: "Neo doesn’t yet have the ability to do these tasks alone. The majority of this video was shot using remote operation."

What follows is a fascinating, real-world trial of the robot's hardware and the dexterity of its human pilot.

A Trial of Teleoperation

The robot is, often in the same minute, both surprisingly capable and profoundly clumsy.

The baseline tests are a showcase of limitations. NEO attempts to crack an egg and smashes it. It tries to flip a pancake and it lands on the floor. When asked to chop, the robot's persona replies:

"I'm gonna stop you there. I am not allowed to hold a knife."

• While whisking cream, a task it struggles with, the robot complains, "My shoulder is on fire right now".
• When attempting the awkward motion of butter-basting a steak, it says, "This one's really hard. It's such an awkward angle. My body does not move like this".

These moments vividly demonstrate the human-in-the-loop strategy 1X is betting on: a human pilot is remotely "embodying" the robot to navigate tasks. The video shows this is not a simple 1-to-1 motion capture. The operator is clearly fighting the hardware's limitations, which results in jerky movements, spilled soup, and torn pizza dough.

The 'Human' Still in the Loop

While NEO shows moments of genuine dexterity—successfully grating cheese, rolling meatballs, and operating a pasta machine ("a machine operating a machine," it quips)—its failures are just as revealing.

Despite DiGiovanni's rule for the final challenge that "I'm not allowed to help you," he is forced to intervene repeatedly.

The robot also struggles with one of the classic challenges in robotics: deformable objects. In the final minutes, NEO nearly fails the challenge because it gets hopelessly tangled in plastic wrap.

Ultimately, the video is a masterful piece of marketing precisely because it doesn't hide (most of) these flaws. It's a fun, chaotic, and honest look at the state of teleoperation. Even guest judge Uncle Roger, a famously harsh food critic, seemed to capture the current state of AI and robotics. After calling NEO's steak entree "generic," he adds:

"This is what you get when you ask ChatGPT to generate random images of steak. Haiya! No imagination."

For 1X, the video is a clear win, demonstrating its robot's capabilities to a massive audience. For the rest of us, it's a valuable, 27-minute data point on the long road ahead for "humanoid companions".

Watch the video below: