- Galgotias University was asked to vacate the India AI Impact Summit expo area
- The university displayed a Chinese-made robotic dog as its own product
- The robot was the Unitree Go2, sold online in India for Rs 2-3 lakh
Galgotias University has been asked to vacate the expo area of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, sources said. The Greater Noida-based institution faced immediate action after a viral video from the event showed its representatives presenting a Chinese-made robotic dog as a product developed by the university's Centre of Excellence.
The robot in question is the Unitree Go2, a commercially available model from the Chinese robotics company Unitree that is sold online in India for between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 3 lakh.
At the summit the machine was displayed and referred to as "Orion". A video that spread rapidly on social media captured a woman, identified in reports as a university representative, explaining the robot's features during a media interaction at the summit.
She stated that Galgotias University's Centre of Excellence had developed "Orion".
A separate clip from an interview showed a university professor making the same claim, telling a reporter that the robot had been built at the Centre of Excellence. Social media users quickly identified the machine as the imported Unitree Go2 and accused the university of passing off foreign technology as an Indian innovation.
In response, Galgotias University posted a statement on X, formerly Twitter. It said the robotic dog had been procured from Unitree and was being used purely as a learning tool for students. The university insisted it had never claimed to have built the device, despite its staff claiming on camera that it did.
"The recently acquired robodog from Unitree is one such step in that journey," the statement read. "It is not merely a machine on display; it is a classroom in motion. Our students are experimenting with it, testing its limits and, in the process, expanding their own knowledge. Let us be clear: Galgotias has not built this robodog, nor have we ever claimed to. Let us be clear - Galgotias has not built this robodog, neither have we claimed. But what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies right here in Bharat."
A later statement from the university described the criticism as part of a "propaganda campaign" against it. The post itself incurred a Community Note on X.
The note stated that the claim of never having presented the robodog as its own was incorrect and misleading. It pointed out that the university had named the robot "Orion" and that its representatives had explicitly claimed it was developed by their team.
"By one misinterpretation, the internet has gone by storm. It might be that I could not convey well what I had wanted to say, or you could not understand well what I wanted to say. I am a faculty member in communications at the School of Management, not in AI. Only you (the media) have heard what the government has said, as far as I know we are here at the expo. As a university, we are standing tall. The robot was brought here only for projection," said the university's communications professor, Neha, who had earlier made the claim that the robot dogs were a Galgotias innovation.
On reports of being asked to vacate the AI Summit expo, Galgotias University Professor Aishwarya Shrivastava said, "As of now, we have no such information."
