Summary
The Chinese manufacturer Unitree Robotics is preparing to bring its most affordable humanoid robot, the Unitree R1, to international markets through Alibaba Group’s marketplace. The rollout will initially cover North America, Japan, Singapore, and Europe, with an exact on-sale date yet to be announced.
Key Takeaways
- The low price of the Unitree R1 (about $4,370) is a significant step towards making humanoid robots accessible to everyone with just a click, similar to car sales on Amazon.
- Selling a humanoid robot on a global marketplace positions it as easily attainable and shifts it from the territory of promise to concrete availability, which serves as a key component in normalizing technology that is still not widely adopted yet.
- The price of the R1 can fluctuate with changes in exchange rates, shipping costs, and import taxes and tariffs. For example, some of its competitors in the humanoid robotics landscape are more expensive than the $4,370 starting price of Unitree’s flagship H1 robot.
More Information
The announcement for the R1 last summer was priced at 39,900 yuan (about $5,900), but its current basic version starts at 29,900 yuan (about $4,370). The robot can talk to it and give commands; Unitree’s large-language multimodal model with voice and image recognition is onboard. It has 26 smart joints and can do cartwheels, lie down and stand up independently, run downhill.
