Chinese start-up Unitree sees humanoid robots in wide commercial use this decade

Chinese start-up Unitree, which initially gained international attention with its quadruped robot dogs, is now gearing up to meet the potentially wider commercial demand for humanoid robots amid continued advances in artificial intelligence (AI).

Hangzhou-based Unitree forecasts a breakthrough in humanoid robot capabilities by 2026, when these automatons are enabled with more advanced perception, comprehension and task-execution capabilities. That is expected to turn up more clear-cut commercial uses for humanoid robots within three to five years.

The company made a big splash this week at the annual Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched television show, where 16 H1 general-purpose humanoid robots joined a troupe of human dancers in a unique performance of Chinese folk dance Yangge.

The Lunar New Year eve performance marked the world’s “first large-scale, fully AI-driven and fully automated cluster humanoid robot performance in history”, Unitree said in a statement.

That milestone showing at the Spring Festival Gala reflects the progress being made by Unitree, which has accelerated its humanoid robot efforts over the past two years, as the field gets increasingly crowded with more foreign and domestic players amid recent advances in AI models.

“The key to humanoid robots is the ‘brain’ – [referring to] intelligence,” marketing director Huang Jiawei said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.

  

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