Playback Speed Label

The “1x,” “2x,” or “10x” marker in the corner of a robot demo video showing its true speed.

Robot demo videos often carry a small label in the corner — “1x” for real time, or “2x,” “4x,” “10x” for sped-up playback. Real-robot policies are often slow and pause mid-task, so publishers speed up the footage to keep it watchable and the runtime short. That's not inherently deceptive, but if the label is missing or too small to notice, viewers will overestimate how fast and fluid the robot really is — and speed is directly tied to whether a robot can meet a factory's cycle time and become commercially viable. So when watching a demo, it helps to check for the speed label, then check whether it's fully autonomous, filmed in one continuous take, and whether only successful attempts were kept — judging a robot's real ability means weighing all of these together.

ExampleA laundry-folding video labeled “4x” means folding one item in reality likely took about four times as long as shown.

Also called

1x / Sped-Up Label, Playback Speed Disclosure

Related

Demo (Demonstration Video) · Fully Autonomous · Teleoperated Demo · One-Take (Uncut) Video · Edited Demo · Cherry-picking

Sources

Mobile ALOHA project page
π0: Our First Generalist Policy - Physical Intelligence