Shenzhen Dobot said on Tuesday it would price its latest Optimus-style humanoid model at 199,000 yuan (US$27,500), which sparked hopes for imminent mass production and drove the company’s shares up nearly 28 per cent.
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Dobot, known for manufacturing robotic arms for industrial applications, unveiled its Dobot Atom last week, calling it the world’s first humanoid robot featuring both dexterous five-finger hands and a straight-knee gait, designed to reduce energy consumption by 42 per cent.
A promotional video on Dobot’s website showed the robot serving breakfast by placing toast, lettuce and cherries on a plate, and pouring a cup of milk. The robot can also move objects and put a lid on a cup of hot coffee. The company has begun taking pre-orders for the humanoid, with mass production expected by mid-2025.
Dobot Atom adds to China’s growing array of humanoid robots, as dozens of start-ups race to develop and produce similar technologies.
Standing at 1.53 metres (5 feet) tall, Dobot Atom boasts a positioning accuracy of 0.05mm and can adapt to common workbench heights ranging from 70cm to 100cm. Its humanlike gait allowed it to navigate narrow spaces with ease, the company said.
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The humanoid is equipped with an embodied intelligence operation model and edge computing power of 1,500 trillion operations per second (TOPS). TOPS is a measure of artificial-intelligence hardware speed. By comparison, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card, unveiled in January, offered over 1,800 TOPS.