humanoid

China manufactures 90% of the world’s humanoid robots and the reason is not its industrial policy: it is crossing the street

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On Chinese New Year, 16 Unitree humanoid robots danced a folk dance before almost a billion viewers. The West reacted as always: some with panic, others with disdain, others with an undisguised admiration that sometimes tends to concoct theories with more clichés regarding China than real analysis. None of those answers is entirely true and that blindness has a cost. The context. China manufactures about 90% of the humanoid robots sold in the world. In 2025, about 13,000 units were shipped, with Chinese companies (AgiBot, Unitree, UBTech…) dominating the ranking by volume, according to Omdia data collected by Bloomberg. Tesla, with all its brand reputation and all its industrial apparatus, internally deployed around 800 units of the Optimus that same year. The figure. He Unitree G1 It costs $13,500. He Tesla Optimus will exceed 20,000. That gap is the difference between being able to iterate ten times with the same budget or staying at one. Between the lines. The story circulating in the West has two versions, equally lazy: The first: all this is the five-year plan, the hand of the State, industrial policy made robot. The second, reserved for the most condescending: it is because they copy. Neither of them explains what is really happening. China’s advantage in robotics does not come from the Communist Party. It comes from the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze Delta: the two densest manufacturing ecosystems on the planet. Motors, actuators, sensors, custom PCBs… everything is available within walking distance. Is what it describes Rui Xuan engineer who has worked in robotics startups in China and Silicon Valley. When Unitree wants to test a new joint design, it crosses the street and comes back with the right component. A team in San Francisco has to wait weeks to receive the same component from China. The background. That difference in iteration speed changes everything in hardware engineering. It stops being a problem of talent, because Chinese and American engineers are equally capable, and becomes a problem of infrastructure. Breaking a robot, learning, replacing it, and trying again: that’s what builds cumulative technical advantage. If breaking a robot costs three weeks of logistics, learning stops and times become longer. Yes, but. China does have state support, and it is completely legitimate to point this out. The government has injected a lot of money into that sector and has set production targets. But it’s not that Silicon Valley is an impoverished region: it has more capital, investors with more experience and resources, and more decades of experience financing high-risk bets. If this were a war to see who has the fattest checkbook, the United States would win handily. But it is not. Furthermore, Chinese state money comes with strings attached: it is classified as “state asset” and founders assume personal liability if the company fails. That pushes capital toward politically safe bets, not necessarily toward the most innovative ones. The question. Can the West make up ground in robotics? Yes, but not like he’s trying. Attracting foreign talent helps on the margin, but does not solve the underlying problem. The equalization involves building local supply chains capable of delivering a spare part in two days, not two weeks. And that is not an immigration or R&D problem. It is an industrial-based problem, and solving it takes many years of work. And of thankless work, from which those who arrive later may reap the fruits. Until then we are going to see many more viral videos of Chinese robots doing pirouettes with increasing naturalness. And it’s because they’ve built the best environment in the world to break things and try again. In engineering, that explains almost everything. Featured image | CCTV In Xataka | Folding clothes or taking apart LEGOs has always been a tedious task. Xiaomi’s new AI for robots has put an end to it

China brought humanoid robots to the country’s biggest television show: it made them practice kung-fu with millimeter precision

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Every year, hundreds of millions of people in China sit in front of the television to watch the Spring Festival Gala, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the most watched annual program on the planet. It is not only a music and dance show, but also a showcase where the country decides what image it wants to project of itself. In this scenario of maximum visibility, the presence of humanoid robots ceases to be a simple technological curiosity and begins to function as a public declaration about the place that innovation occupies in the national narrative. What happened there was not just an artistic number, but a clear clue as to where the Asian giant is looking when it thinks about its technological future. Kung fu, choreography and coordination. To present their robots to millions of spectators, the organizers turned to a deeply recognizable symbol: martial arts. In the CCTV broadcast available on YouTube We can see robots using traditional weapons such as swords and nunchucks, as well as doing tricks and jumping from trampolines, always in sequences shared with human performers. The choice of kung fu provided more than just visual spectacularity, it can also be interpreted as a close way of reading technological advancement within a tradition known to the public. The magnitude of the event. The Spring Festival Gala has been broadcast since 1983 and is an inseparable part of the New Year celebration in hundreds of millions of homes. Reuters also describes it as an event comparable, in terms of media scale, to the American Super Bowl, capable of concentrating popular culture, political message and industrial ambition in a single night. What appears in that scenario entertains and, at the same time, projects a message and indicates priorities. A gateway for the industry. Behind the staging there were specific names and a visible strategy. They participated in the gala companies known in the West such as Unitree, but others less known such as MagicLab, Galbot and Noetix. The immediate precedent helps to understand the moment: Unitree’s robot performance in the previous edition went viral and, in a way, brought this technology closer to the general public. So the idea of ​​betting on a similar show again is reasonable. From the stage to the factory. The public display of these systems fits with a line of industrial policy that places robotics and AI at the center of the next Chinese manufacturing stage. In recent years we have seen how the Asian giant has invested heavily in this sector. According to OmdiaChina accounted for around 90% of the nearly 13,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide last year, a global shipping metric that does not go unnoticed. Morgan Stanley also projects that Chinese sales could exceed 28,000 units this year, which would point to a notable expansion phase. In Xataka There are people sharing their court cases with AI. The problem is when a judge considers the conversations as evidence In the end, what was seen on that stage went beyond well-executed choreography. Behind each movement appeared a country narrative that combines technological ambition, industrial policy and cultural projection in the same television image. The question is no longer whether these robots can perform in front of millions of people, but rather how much their presence will grow in the coming years and into what spaces of daily life they will end up integrating. For now, its massive presence is destined for this type of spectacle. Images | CCTV In Xataka | While technology companies dispense with juniors to replace them with AI, IBM is doing the opposite: catching bargains (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news China brought humanoid robots to the country’s biggest television show: it made them practice kung-fu with millimeter precision was originally published in Xataka by Javier Marquez .

claims its new humanoid robot runs like an elite athlete

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For years, when we think about humanoid robots, the image that usually comes to mind is that of machines capable of making impossible jumps or executing perfectly measured stuntslike those popularized by Boston Dynamics with Atlas. At the opposite extreme are designs oriented toward repetitive tasks and controlled environments, like Tesla’s Optimus. Between both imaginaries there is an obvious gap: it is difficult to visualize a robot as an athlete. However, that frontier is beginning to move with proposals that no longer only seek balance or skill, but also performance typical of human athletics. ‘Bolt’, the athlete robot. We are talking about the new humanoid presented by the Chinese company MirrorMe Technology, which claims to have reached a maximum speed of 10 meters per second during tests in real conditions. The company maintains that this is the first time that a full-size robot has achieved that record outside of a laboratory, a milestone that, if confirmed, would shift the conversation from controlled demonstration to performance in environments closer to the physical world. To place the magnitude of the data as a historical reference, Usain Bolt clocked 9.58 seconds in the 100 meters during the 2009 World Cup in Berlin, a mark that at that time defined the ceiling of sprint athletics. Real running. Achieving high speeds in a humanoid requires solving one of the biggest challenges in bipedal robotics: maintaining dynamic balance while the body endures repeated impacts and constant changes of support. In humans, this coordination between perception, motor control and response occurs almost automatically, but in a machine it requires redesigning joints, optimizing energy delivery and fine-tuning stability in real time. MirrorMe maintains that the Bolt incorporates new joint configurations and a power system optimized to approximate human movement patterns. A job that started years ago. The company had already attracted attention with Black Panther IIa research-oriented robot that traveled 100 meters in 13.17 seconds during a television broadcast in China. In that same demonstration its top speed was around 9.7 meters per second. Bolt thus appears as the next logical step in that search for ever-increasing physical performance. Robots as athletes. Bolt’s advance also fits into a broader context in which China is exploring the athletic dimension of humanoid robotics. Public demonstrations of robots have appeared in recent years capable of fighting in disciplines such as kickboxingdeveloped by companies such as Unitree Robotics, in addition to viral tournaments that serve as a showcase to measure agility, balance and coordination. This ecosystem suggests that physical performance is beginning to become a relevant metric beyond pure research. The future. Beyond the record that the company says it has achieved, MirrorMe imagines specific applications for this type of high-performance humanoids. Among them, he mentions the possibility of them acting as training partners for human athletes, an idea that points both to professional sports and to research in biomechanics and movement. However, as with many announcements in advanced robotics, the true scope will depend on sustained testing over time and real-world usage scenarios. Images | MirrorMe In Xataka | OpenAI going from 70% share to 46% is the symptom of something more worrying: they have entered panic mode

Hyundai imagines factories full of humanoid robots. A Korean union has said ‘not so fast’

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Hyundai has been building a very specific story for months about the future of its factories, one in which humanoid robots go from being a distant promise to a real industrial tool. The image is powerful and connects with a global race to automate increasingly complex processes, but in South Korea that discourse has already found its first limit. Even before robots enter production lines, the union has come forward to make its position clear and warn that any changes that impact employment will have to be negotiated. A clear warning. Hyundai Motor Union has made it clear that “Without an agreement between the company and workers, not a single robot can enter South Korean plants,” stressing that any decision with an impact on employment must go through the negotiation table. The message connects directly with the current collective agreement, which requires all measures that affect work to be subject to debate and joint approval. With this positioning, the introduction of humanoids is emerging as one of the possible reasons for friction between worker representatives and the Asian corporation. Fear that South Korea will lose prominence. The union links automation to a broader movement of industrial reorganization, marked by the growth of manufacturing in the United States. As they explain, the planned increase in capacity at the US plant could end up subtracting volume from factories in South Korea, and they maintain that two centers would already be suffering from a lack of workload. In this context, humanoids are interpreted not only as a technological tool, but as an element that can accelerate job adjustments if it is not accompanied by clear guarantees regarding the maintenance of employment. The starting point of the discussion. This comes after Hyundai introduced Atlas, the humanoid robot developed by Boston Dynamicsas a key piece of its medium-term industrial strategy. The firm assured that it plans to progressively integrate it into its global network of factories starting in 2028. It also explained that these robots are designed to take on general industrial tasks and work alongside people, with the aim of reducing physical effort and taking on potentially dangerous jobs. Of course, he avoided specifying how many units he will deploy in the first phase or how much the project will cost. First in the United States. The manufacturer has already begun to draw how it wants to industrialize this bet. The group has explained that it will build a specific plant in the United States for the production of robots, a factory dedicated to producing Atlas on a large scale in the coming years. The first operational destination would be at the Georgia plant, known as HMGMAwhere humanoids would initially be used in very specific tasks, such as classifying and sequencing parts for the assembly line. The small labor print. Hyundai’s commitment is part of a much broader race to bring humanoid robots to the industry. Companies such as Tesla, Amazon or the Chinese manufacturer BYD have announced similar plans, although with different degrees of maturity. Some projects have already gone from demonstration to real work, such as the robot Figure 01 in a BMW plantwhere he performs support tasks autonomously. These are still limited and highly supervised experiences, but sufficient to show that the leap from the laboratory to the factory has already begun. Images | hyundai In Xataka | 100% autonomous factories where it is not necessary to turn on the light: China is already considering manufacturing cars only with robots in 2030

China is winning the humanoid robot race. The problem is that this race doesn’t really exist.

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Fritz Lang wanted to imagine the future and painted it for us with humanoid robots integrated into society. That maschinenmensch of ‘Metrópolis’ (1927) was a preview of what they now pursue with more ambition than anyone Chinese manufacturers, who They have not stopped developing more and more of these robots. They are winning the race by far, but the problem is that the race is non-existent. (Almost) nobody buys humanoid robots. These Chinese manufacturers were by far the most responsible for the sales of humanoid robots, which in 2025 amounted to the figure of… 13,000 units. The data reflects a forceful reality: in the world of domestic humanoid robots there is a lot (a lot) of noise, but few (very few) nuts. More than in 2024 = very little. Humanoid robots from Chinese manufacturers sold much more than those from American companies like Tesla or Figure AI according to data from the consulting firm Omdia. The company that has sold the most according to that report is the Chinese startup Shanghai AgiBot Innovation Technology Co., which distributed a total of 5,168 robots in 2025. It was followed by Unitree Robotics and UBTech Robotics Corp. Although total sales were five times those of 2024, the final figure reflects that the market is in its infancy. Huge expectations. Despite this, Citigroup esteem that in 2050 there will be 648 million humanoid robots. The great hope is that the promising evolution of AI models will serve to overcome current limitations and have multiple practical applications, once integrated into robots. There are already promising developments in this regard, and robots and AIs separately have already demonstrated their capacity in limited environments. like the manufacturing, logistics or customer service. China and “affordable” robotics. Although there are notable companies in this field in the US, their humanoid robots are much more expensive. Elon Musk indicated by the end of 2025 that “once production reaches one million units annually, Optimus will likely be priced between $20,000 and $25,000.” Meanwhile, Unitree already offers “affordable” robots (but not humanoid) for $6,000, and AgiBot asks for $14,000 for his. This company was in fact named by Jensen Huang during his talk at the NVIDIA event at CES 2026. The Chinese government helps. As in other industrial areas, there is strong support from the Chinese government in this area, and according to Bloomberg Favorable policies are combined with aid for the construction of training centers. The number of companies and startups developing this type of solutions already exceeds 150, and that even points to a potential “robotic bubble.” The challenge of robotic hands. One of the great challenges of this segment is to ensure that the dexterity of machines is comparable to that of humans. For now this is not the case especially with the example of robotic hands, which mostly They are very unskilledwhich limits its application to real home environments. The battery life of these robots is another obstacle that can hinder their application in our daily lives. Future implications. If these challenges are overcome, we will once again find ourselves with a disturbing panorama in which geopolitical tensions could make access to these robots difficult. There is also the problem of employment: if robots achieve the ability to perform manual tasks, the threat to virtually any human worker will be notable. How will governments react to this situation? Image | Agibot In Xataka | China prepares its next technological assault. Huawei and UBTech have just teamed up to bring humanoid robots to homes

We still don’t know if humanoid robots will be the next great technological revolution. Yes we know that China will lead it

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There are a lot of companies determined to sell us the idea that, in the not too distant future, everyone we will have a humanoid robot at home. We have many doubts that they will be the revolution that they promise (and there are reasons for this), but in China they have it very clear. Patents. They count in South China Morning Post that Morgan Stanley has published volume 3 of its series ‘Robot Almanac‘, which details some key data on the state of the humanoid robot industry. China is far ahead when it comes to patents, having registered 7,705 patents in the last five years, while in the United States they have registered 1,561, almost five times less than its technological rival par excellence. Dependence. It’s not just about patents, China has another key advantage and that is that its production lines are much more efficient from a cost point of view. This causes the rest of the companies that manufacture humanoids to depend on them if they do not want their production costs to skyrocket. The cost of building a supply chain in which China was left out would raise prices exponentially. The report estimates that manufacturing the Tesla Optimus Gen 2 without China’s participation would raise the cost from about $46,000 to $131,000. Obsession with robots. Humanoid robots from companies like Unitree or Deep Robotics have been in the public eye for a long time. We have seen them participate in the first robotic olympics, fight, play soccer and how dance corps in macro concerts. They are appearances clearly focused on going viral, showing their capabilities to the world and, ultimately, making people see them as something cool and want to buy one. However, although humanoids take all the spotlight, they are only the tip of the iceberg of a strategy that goes much further. Personified AI. In English it would be ’embodied AI’ and it is the approach that China has taken in his particular AI career. The government included the term in his job report this year, which highlights its strategic importance. More than large language and software models, China wants AI that is present, whether in the form of humanoid robots, drones, autonomous vehicles or industrial robots. Speaking of industry, guess who has 51% of all industrial robots in the world. Exactly: China. Industrial robots. According to data from Financial TimesChina installs 280,000 robots a year in its factories with a clear objective: automate to achieve greater efficiency and power continue being the factory of the world. Now that workers’ salaries are higherthe way they have found to remain competitive against markets like India or Bangladesh is automation. Image | Andy Kelly in Unsplash In Xataka | I have asked for water from the first humanoid robot working in Beijing. It’s a weird vending machine.

put UBTECH’s most advanced humanoid robots to work

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In Fangchenggang, where control windows and cargo trucks outline the routine of a border with Vietnam, an experiment is being prepared that will not take place among laboratory prototypes, but among travelers, agents and logistics workers. China has chosen this place to test humanoids in real situations, with deliveries scheduled from December and very specific functions: guiding movements of people, supporting logistical tasks, participating in certain commercial services and carrying out inspections both at border posts and at industrial facilities. An ambitious contract. The agreement signed between UBTech and a center specialized in robotics in this border city amounts to 264 million yuan, about 34 million euros, and establishes the deployment of the model Walker S2 in different types of scenarios: border crossing, logistics zones and industrial complexes. According to the company, the humanoids will be intended to guide flows of people, organize internal transportation operations and carry out structured inspections in facilities linked to steel, copper and aluminum. From prototypes to 800 million. UBTech arrived at Fangchenggang with a model that is no longer presented as a prototype, but as an industrial product. The Walker Series accumulate valued orders by 800 million yuan by 2025, not including educational and research models. UBTech assures that it has already begun to deliver the first industrial batches of the Walker S2 and that its objective is to accelerate production at scale, with a view to manufacturing thousands of units and reducing costs so that humanoids enter real environments. Robotic administrations. The rollout of UBTech fits into a broader trend within the Chinese public sector. The Zhejiang immigration office already uses robots for daily tasks, such as support in people flows and information services. At Hangzhou airport, one of these systems answers simple questions to passengers, while at the top of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, held in Tianjin, a multilingual robot developed by iBen Intelligence was used for protocol assistance. The Fangchenggang initiative is part of a coordinated strategy from the State to organize the humanoid sector in China. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology created a national committee specific for this type of robots, chaired by the organization itself and made up of companies, innovation centers and relevant technical figures. It includes executives from UBTech, Unitree, AgiBot and representatives of the Shanghai innovation center. The goal is to set standards and accelerate the transition from laboratory to commercial and administrative applications. What is relevant is not only that the humanoids have contracts and assigned functions, but also the place where they are going to test them. A border is a regulated space, with people in transit, goods, controls and tight times. If they work there, it will be easier to propose new applications in other public contexts. The Fangchenggang Pass serves as a laboratory, but also as a stage to observe what sharing tasks between machines and human workers entails. Images | UBTECH In Xataka | NVIDIA is the most valuable company in the world because it had no competition. Until Google started making chips

In 2018 Russia presented its new and revolutionary humanoid robot. The only problem is that it wasn’t a robot.

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Yeah “AI” is a trendy technological concept, the other is robotics. humanoid robotsspecifically. The United States and China have embarked on a race to see who creates humanoid consumer robotsbut when in 2018 it was only Atlas jumpingRussia already had a humanoid robot dancing and putting on a show. His name was Boris, but there was one problem: he wasn’t a robot. robotic cold war. Until the recent generation of robots, which have left laboratories and workshops to become compete even in sports eventsthe great reference in robotics was Boston Dynamics. On the one hand, with Spot, the robot dog. On the other hand, with an Atlas that did parkour and executed very fluid and calculated movements. Although owned by Hyundai, those advances came from the United States, and Russia wanted to get into the conversation. Thus, in December of 2018, something occurred on the state channel Russia-24: a robot that looked like an astronaut and named Boris came on stage. He did so in the city of Yaroslavl, where the Proyektoria Annual Science and Technology Forum had just been inaugurated, aimed at promoting robotics and technology among young people. It was an important event, since it had the support of the Ministry of Education itself and Putin had attended previous versions. The Russian prodigy. Boris was a machine, in the figurative sense. He danced, talked, had dreams and illusions, stating that he wanted to learn musical composition and draw, and it was treaty like a celebrity on the television channel. It was the most advanced example of Russian robotics and seemed finished. Atlas had cables hangingBoris a helmet, little lights and he was a movie robot. There were those who began to wonder things. Appears at the 32nd hour of this video. Suspicions. TJournal is a Russian technology website and was one of the first to question the authenticity of the robot. How to collect BBCthe questions were quite accurate: Why aren’t there any sensors? How has it appeared out of nowhere without prior leaks? Why is no one on the Internet talking about something so advanced? Why were some movements so fluid during the dance? Why was the voice so robotic? And most importantly: why was it so unnecessarily large? But the most important thing is that, beyond the official images of Russia-24, which seemed to be very concerned that the country gave the impression of having this very advanced device, there were other images. Taken by the assistants, in some of those photos from behind a human neck was perfectly visible protruding from the back of Boris’s head. Caught. Very expensive costume. There was no need to investigate much: Boris was nothing more than a suit that a worker had put on. The suit could be bought. If you had 3,600 euros, you could buy the Alyosha model from the Show Robots company, which also came with Iron Man or Robocop suits. In fact, it was a media agency founded by a rival of Putin that public some photos with the actor putting on the suit. Deception? Naaah, a joke. Imagine the embarrassment after pulling on the blanket. The video went viral and was mocked, so much so that, a few days after its publication, Russia-24 removed it from its YouTube channel. However, two days after the original broadcast, they re-uploaded it and published an interview with the journalist who had done the piece. The excuse? He was sure no one would believe it, since he was like Santa Claus: a project for children. The problem is that the journalist narrated the original report as if it were Russia’s latest technological marvel. Those responsible for Proyektoria threw up their hands and said that they had never claimed that it was a robot, that it was not their business and that those at Russia-24 did not find out about the film. The problem is that there were those who pulled the blanket and discovered that Russia-24 had already shown a fake military robot. In fact, in 2019 the play was repeated with another robot taking the kickoff in a match between FC Orenburg and CSK Moscow. It was another man in disguise and the video is brutal. The state of Russian robotics… In the international media there were those who laughed it off, like CBS affirming that “regardless of the intention, Boris will not go down in history as the most embarrassing example of Russian fake news.” And we remember this episode because, recently, Russia has presented AIdol, its first humanoid robot. Already gone… wrong. With the soundtrack of ‘Rocky’ in the background and with a face of “please, what am I doing here”, the first thing the new Russian robot did was take a couple of steps to fall on its face. The scene is high-level unintentional comedy, with the robot kicking on the floor and the employees taking it away and covering the stage with a large black cloth. At least AIdol is real. Images | ПроеКТОриЯ In Xataka | In China they are not satisfied with creating advanced robots: a company has developed a head that gestures like a human

This humanoid robot promised to do our housework. For now it’s a $20,000 puppet

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Neo is 5’6″, weighs 30kg, is dressed in some kind of beige work overalls and moves slowly and clumsily. It is one of the most advanced humanoid robots in the world—so it seems in the official websiteof course—and it costs $20,000, but despite all this it has a big problem: it is not really autonomous, and is controlled by another human being, as if it were an ultra-modern puppet. There is a long way from saying to doing. We talked about Neo a year ago. The company that develops it, 1X, boasted of beginning to test it in the real world. The version they used then, Neo Beta, had an autonomy of up to four hours and had sensors that allowed it to boost its “embedded learning” system. Already then it was indicated that a teleoperator would connect to the robot to show it how to do something. Robot-puppet. In reality, the teleoperator is the key to everything, because this robot, like its current version, does not work autonomously, but is controlled remotely by a human operator. Said operator puts on mixed reality glasses and uses controls to perform this control. In The Wall Street Journal have had the opportunity to try it and to see how the future that robotics companies paint for us seems to be still very far away. a robot clumsy and slow. In the video that accompanies the article it is clearly seen how the robot’s movements are erratic and slow. It took him forever to open the refrigerator to get a bottle of water and he managed to put two (plastic) glasses in the dishwasher, but it also took him a long time to get it. Folding a sweater took him two minutes. All these operations show that the dexterity of these robots is still very far from equaling that of humans, especially when it comes to emulating our hands. And on top of that, privacy. During the tests it became clear that one of the problems of using this robot is that the user sacrifices part of his privacy, because he must give permission for the teleoperator to see through the robot’s cameras to complete his tasks. And that means “getting into our house.” 1X CEO Bernt Børnich explained in WSJ that Neo “is not for everyone. If you buy this product, it is because you agree with the social agreement. If we don’t have your data, we can’t improve the product.” Even so, those responsible say, “you will always have control” and for example you can establish prohibited areas or blur faces in the transmission. See to learn. They precisely need all that visual data: so that the Neo’s neural network system can learn from trying to complete those household tasks and, from there, solve them more accurately. It is something similar to what happens with Tesla’s fleet of cars, which also “learns” thanks to all those kilometers that the cars travel to perfect their autonomous driving system. “Probably safe”. Another key element of these robots is the security they offer in an environment as private as our home. It’s not particularly heavy, which helps minimize risks, and 1X says Neo is “probably safe.” In 2026 it will be much more autonomous. Børnich’s promise is that Neo will “do many of the household tasks autonomously,” although he admitted that the quality with which those tasks are completed will be somewhat poor initially. He compared the situation with that of the first images and videos generated by AI: now those images and videos are practically indistinguishable from reality, and something similar will happen according to him with Neo. The promise may never be fulfilled. Neo is the latest example of how the robotics segment is the other great seller of expectations (along with AI) for the future. The challenge here is just as enormous, but the fact that Neo is not truly autonomous is disappointing, as was what happened with Tesla’s Optimus or the recent news of the Japanese store robots. Yann LeCun, one of the top AI managers at Meta, indicated at a recent conference at MIT that these robots could end up going nowhere. According to him, the companies that are investing billions of dollars in humanoid robots “have no idea” how to make these machines “smart enough to be generally useful.” In Xataka | Amazon has calculated how much it costs to lay off 600,000 employees: 30 cents per item sold and many robots

The race to put a humanoid robot in our house has begun. It’s an absurd race

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A robot that walks around the house picking up what we have left lying around, loads the dishwasher and even starts the washing machine. It is not a science fiction movie, it is the advertisement of the Figure 03 and it is not the only company interested in sell us the idea that soon we will all have a home robot. Detective Spooner doesn’t like this. Robots for everyone There are people convinced that in a few years Humanoid robots will be as common in homes as robot vacuum cleaners are now. One of those people is Elon Musk, who assured that In five or six years we will all be able to afford a personal robot. Peter Diamandis, well-known writer and “futurologist” predicts that the first humanoid robots will reach homes as early as 2026. It is not an obsession of the West, In China they are also obsessed with robotics, although from a different approach. The government wants robots to have transformed the industry by 2035, but it also contemplates creation of robots as accompaniment within the home. We do not know if this future will materialize or if humanoid robots will end up being an eccentricity for a few. Regardless of whether they succeed, These are the companies that want to make it possible. Figure AI Figure 03 Based in California, it is the company that has shown the most progress in creating a humanoid robot for the home. Its latest model, the Figure 03, is presented to us as a kind of robotic butler that does all the housework. Until now the previous models did not go much beyond the “wow” effect of the video, but this time it is different because Figure has a plan to mass produce them. The first year They hope to produce 12,000 robots a yearalmost nothing. Figure is the spearhead of robotics in the United States. Its valuation is 39,000 million dollars and among its investors are NVIDIA, Salesforce, Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft and Jeff Bezos himself. At the moment it is not for sale nor do we know the price it will have. tesla Tesla Optimus Gen 2 No introduction needed. The first time we learned that Tesla wanted to make a humanoid robot it was in 2021. In 2022 they had a functional prototype and in 2023 they presented the Optimus Gen 2. Although we have not seen him doing household chores, they did show how he was capable of handling fragile objects like an egg. According to Musk, the Optimus will be cheaper than a car (between 20 and 30,000 dollars), but the reality is that we are in 2025 and The promise has not yet come true. Musk continues determined to build “an army of robots” and just showed your worry about who will control him. In Tesla’s latest earnings call, he stated that he wants to maintain strong influence over this hypothetical army. 1X Technologies Neo Gamma It is based in California, but it is a Norwegian company. 1x’s goal has been the home from the beginning and its goal is a robot that does cleaning, organizing and even running errands. A year ago they presented the Neo Beta robot and in February of this year they presented the Neo Gammaits most advanced model. It is capable of interacting with humans, can manipulate all types of objects, and is covered in soft materials. 1X’s plan is to start deploying its robots in homes this year, but in a pilot project. The company has been set as a goal manufacture 100,000 units in 2027 and “millions more in 2028”. We don’t know anything about how much it will cost, although 1X says it is “expected to be priced competitively within the home robotics market,” whatever that means. The company is valued at 10 billion dollars and between your most powerful investors There are OpenAI and EQT. Unitree Robotics Unitree H2 Based in Hangzhou, it is one of the companies that form the ‘Six Little Dragons’ and leader in robotics in China. We knew her for her quadruped robotsbut recently they have moved on to humanoid robots. Its most advanced model, the Unitree H2was announced just a few days ago and is capable of dancing and even doing kung-fu, but it is not as focused on the home as other proposals. In China, spectacular demonstrations of robots that dance or box have become very fashionable, but for the moment They are not showing practical applications for these humanoid robots. Of course, it is the only one that already has humanoid robots for sale and at very competitive prices. The Unitree G1 costs $16,000, but the Unitree H1 costs 131,000 euros. Deep Robotics DR02 It is also a Chinese company and part of the ‘Six Little Dragons’, which are the six most cutting-edge companies in the country in AI and robotics. Like Unitree, they also launched quadruped robots and recently switched to humanoids. Its focus is the creation of resilient models so that they can work in sectors such as industry, logistics or public services. Their latest model is the DR02, a robot resistant to water and dust and is designed to work outdoors. In the future the company also wants to expand to other areas such as the home. What is the point of a humanoid robot? There are other voices at the opposite end of these visionaries, such as that of Rodney Brooks, the co-founder of iRobot. Brooks believes that humanoid robots are a fantasy and they are a format that is anything but practical. Keeping such a robot standing requires a lot of energy and can be a huge risk if it falls. Furthermore, he states that Imitating the dexterity of a human hand is practically impossible. For Ehsan Saffari, robotics engineer, There is no point in making human-shaped robots. At least not if we want them to be efficient. To illustrate this, he gives a very good example: “Imagine that instead of building a … Read more

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