4NE1 Mini's first interactive demo: follow this order

The easiest mistake on unboxing day is treating "it can stand up" as "it can demo." A humanoid robot is held by a fixture in the box; after unlocking, it stands itself upright, which looks impressive. But between standing upright and "walking over, shaking hands, saying a couple of sentences" there are still three chunks of work: calibration, networking, and script adaptation.

I've mentored two newbies on this, and both got stuck at step two onward. So this post is written in order, from unboxing to running a complete greeting interaction, spelling out what you should see at each step.

Check the specs first—don't mix up the models. The 4NE1 has two versions with very different builds, and I've seen plenty of people search up the wrong info:

Item	4NE1 Mini	4NE1 Gen 4
Height	1.32 m	1.8 m
Total weight	36 kg	65 kg
Payload	3 kg	Industrial-grade, an order of magnitude apart
Positioning	Education, research, interactive demos	Industrial work, home assistance

Payload is the upper limit of what it can steadily lift. The Mini's job is light—expect to be disappointed if you want it to haul boxes, but for reception, guiding, and talking with people it's actually more suitable than the big guy: lower center of gravity, smaller motion range, lower site requirements. I hear the Mini is priced around the twenty-thousand-euro mark, an order of magnitude apart from the industrial model.

Step 1: Site and power-on

1. Find a flat surface—hard floor or short-pile carpet both work; don't power on near thresholds, floor outlets, or curled carpet edges. Leave about a meter and a half of clear space around it, and stand directly in front of it, not to the side.

2. Find the emergency stop. Don't skip this one. There's one on the body and one on the console; before powering on, press it once to confirm that pressing it cuts power to the whole machine and that releasing it requires a twist to reset. I started working on e-stop circuits a month ago, and the most common pitfall is an e-stop that only does a software pause while the motors are still energized—what you need to confirm is the true power-cut kind.

3. Power on. You'll hear the fan and see the joint indicator lights come on; wait for the self-check to finish. It'll usually do a slow stand-up motion, about ten-plus seconds—don't steady it during this. Its self-balancing stands by its own micro-adjustments, and your steadying actually interferes.

4. In the console, the device status changes to connected, and battery and joint temperatures are in normal range—step one is done.

Step 2: Networking and calibration

In the device list, tap Add Device, select the name it broadcasts; the pairing code is on the back of the body or on the included card. After connecting it'll prompt for a firmware version—don't rush to upgrade; get the demo running first.

Calibration is letting the machine re-learn where each joint's zero point is; after being moved, dropped, or changing floors, you have to redo it. Follow the prompts and have it do a few motions; stand about a meter directly in front and watch whether the head turns smoothly or stutters. The hand step will have you confirm the grip's open-close range; once both travel bars on the interface are in the green zone, you pass.

Step 3: Edit the script, run the first demo

The console usually comes with a few templates: greeting, guiding, handshake. Pick the simplest, greeting, which only involves speaking and nodding.

Replace the welcome line in the template with your own, kept within two sentences—the reason is in the pitfalls below.

Tap Run. Expected result: it turns toward you, tilts its head up slightly, finishes those two sentences, nods once, and returns to the initial pose. The whole thing takes under a minute.

Pitfalls

Speech recognition is very unstable under noise. In an exhibition hall with crowds and air conditioning, my first script had five sentences stuffed in, and it went off track halfway through recognition. Changing to two short sentences with fixed gestures raised the pass rate a lot.

Don't open the handshake at full force right away. The Mini's hand is a fine-grasp design; 3 kg is the whole-arm limit, not the grip force the palm can take. The first time I tried, it gripped rather tightly, the person's hand instinctively pulled back, which in turn messed up the force control. Use the included parameters and tune up from low until it feels comfortable to your own grip. I've used hybrid force-position control for about a month, and my takeaway is that in this kind of interaction scenario, force control's tolerance matters more than precision.

Also, don't move it alone. 36 kg doesn't sound heavy, but the center of gravity is distributed differently from a human body, and lifting it easily throws your back out. To relocate it, use two people, or the carry handles at the bottom.

After it runs

Don't rush to add complex motions. Next, I suggest a cross-scenario retest: run the same script in another room and see how much lighting and noise changes affect speech recognition. Once that passes, then consider adding motions like handing over objects that need hand-eye coordination.

Standing upright only means the self-check passed; running a script through repeatedly is what counts as really getting the hang of it.