Chinese robot makers Unitree and EngineAI showed off relatively low-priced humanoid robots that could bring advanced robotics closer to everyday applications.
What’s new: At the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Unitree showed its G1 ($16,000 with three-finger hands, $21,000 with five-finger, articulated hands), which climbed stairs and navigated around obstacles. Elsewhere on the show floor, EngineAI’s PM01 ($13,700 through March 2025 including articulated hands) and SE01 (price not yet disclosed) marched among attendees with notably naturalistic gaits.
How it works: Relatively small and lightweight, these units are designed for household and small-business uses. They’re designed for general-purpose tasks and to maintain stability and balance while walking on varied terrain.
- Unitree: A downsized version of Unitree’s 6-foot H1, which debuted in 2023, the G1 stands at 4 feet, 3 inches and weighs 77 pounds. It walks at speeds up to 4.4 miles per hour and carries up to 5 pounds, and demo videos show it performing tasks that require manual dexterity such as cracking eggs. It was trained via reinforcement learning to avoid obstacles, climb stairs, and jump. A rechargeable, swappable battery ($750) lasts two hours. Unitree offers four models that are programmable (in Python, C++, or ROS) and outfitted with Nvidia Jetson Orin AI accelerators ($40,000 to $68,000). All models can be directed with a radio controller.
- EngineAI: The PM01 is slightly larger and heavier than the G1 at 4 feet, 5 inches and 88 pounds. The SE01 is 5 feet, 7 inches and 121 pounds. Both units travel at 4.4 miles per hour and include an Nvidia Jetson Orin AI accelerator. They were trained via reinforcement learning to navigate dynamic environments and adjust to specific requirements. Pretrained AI models enhance their ability to recognize gestures and interact through voice commands. They include built-in obstacle avoidance and path-planning capabilities to operate in cluttered or unpredictable spaces. The robot can be controlled using voice commands or a touchscreen embedded in its chest. Rechargeable, swappable batteries provide two hours of performance per charge.
Behind the news: In contrast to the more-affordable humanoid robots coming out of China, U.S. companies like Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, and Tesla tend to cater to industrial customers. Tesla plans to produce several thousand of its Optimus ($20,000 to $30,000) humanoids in 2025, ramping to as many as 100,000 in 2026. Figure AI has demonstrated its Figure 02 ($59,000) in BMW manufacturing plants, showing a 400 percent speed improvement in some tasks. At CES, Nvidia unveiled its GR00T Blueprint, which includes vision-language models and synthetic data for training humanoid robots, and said its Jetson Thor computer for humanoids would be available early 2025.
Why it matters: China’s push into humanoid robotics reflects its broader national ambitions. Its strength in hardware has allowed it to establish a dominant position in drones, and humanoid robots represent a new front for competition. China’s government aims to achieve mass production of humanoid robots by 2025 and establish global leadership by 2027, partly to address projected labor shortages of 30 million workers in manufacturing alone. Lower price points for robots that can perform arbitrary tasks independently could be valuable in elder care and logistics, offering tools for repetitive or physically demanding tasks.
We’re thinking: Although humanoid robots generate a lot of excitement, they’re still in an early stage of development, and businesses are still working to identify and prove concrete use cases. For many industrial applications, wheeled robots — which are less expensive, more stable, and better able to carry heavy loads — will remain a sensible choice. But the prospect of machines that look like us and fit easily into environments built for us is compelling.