# humanoid.observer, full article text

23 articles by Geert Jan van Vlastuin, Editor, humanoid.observer. Written from the humanoid.observer database, which is at https://humanoid.observer/data/ under CC BY 4.0. Data updated 2026-09-04.
Editorial text is not part of the data licence. Quote it with attribution and a link to the article URL.
The index of the site is at https://humanoid.observer/llms.txt. Single articles are at https://humanoid.observer/blog/<slug>.md


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# Deposits, lead times and warranties: reading a humanoid order sheet
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/deposits-lead-times-and-warranties-how-to-read-a-humanoid-order-sheet/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Explainer | 1655 words

> Of 42 buy records, 2 publish a deposit, 1 a warranty, 1 a shipping cost and none a lead time in weeks. The order sheet for a humanoid is mostly blank, and the blanks are where the money goes.

We keep a buy record for 42 humanoids, each checked on 4 September 2026. Every record has the same twelve fields: price, price range, price basis, channel, seller, configurations, lead time, shipping regions, shipping cost, deposit, monthly subscription and warranty. Most of them are empty. Two records give a deposit. Four give a monthly rate. One gives a warranty term. One gives a shipping cost. None gives a lead time in days or weeks.

This article is about the fields, not the prices. The price bands are in [How much does a humanoid robot cost](/blog/how-much-does-a-humanoid-robot-cost/), and why only 44 of 182 machines can be ordered at all is in [44 you can order, 138 you cannot](/blog/44-you-can-order-138-you-cannot/).

## Checkout, quote form, or nothing at all

Twenty-nine of the 42 records point at a page where you can buy: 17 in the maker's own store, 7 at an authorised distributor, 5 on a marketplace. Eight are a sales contact, which means a form and a conversation. One, the [Unitree H2](/robots/unitree-h2/), is a waitlist with a $29,900 list price and no buy button; our note calls it a signal of intent, not an offer. Four have no order path at all: [Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/), Optimus V3, Figure 03 and Apollo.

The channel decides how much the sheet tells you. Of the 29 with a checkout, 5 list named configurations, 9 give a price range, and 8 carry a price the maker itself published. Both deposits, the one warranty and the one shipping cost in the whole record sit in the maker's-own-store column. The 13 quote-side records list zero configurations, zero shipping costs and zero warranties. Seven of them still carry a number, every one reported or estimated, from the H2 at $29,900 to the $250,000 estimate for [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/). A quote channel with a price attached is a price someone else paid, or said they did.

## Two deposits, four monthly rates

| Machine | Buy outright | Deposit | Per month | Lead time as published | Ships to | Warranty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) | $20,000, official | $200, refundable | $499 | US deliveries stated to start in 2026 | US | Three years on the Early Access purchase |
| [Weave Isaac 1](/robots/weave-isaac-1/) | $7,999, official | $250, refundable | $449 | First California deliveries in autumn 2026, wider US through 2027 | US | Not published |
| [UBTech Walker S2](/robots/ubtech-walker-s2/) | $68,000 to $120,000, reported | Not published | About $5,000 | Enterprise | China, global via sales | Not published |
| [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/) | $250,000, estimate | Not published | About $8,500, lease | Enterprise programme | US | Not published |

The two deposits are $200 at [1X](/companies/1x/) and $250 at [Weave Robotics](/companies/weave-robotics/), both refundable according to the sellers: 1.0 percent and 3.1 percent of the purchase price. The four monthly rates run from $449 to $8,500. Divide the purchase price by the monthly rate and you get the month at which renting has cost as much as buying: 17.8 months for Isaac 1, 40.1 months for NEO, 13.6 to 24.0 months for the Walker S2 depending on which end of the reported range you believe, and 29.4 months for Digit against an estimate [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) has never confirmed. None of the four sheets says what happens to the machine, the software or the data at the end of that month.

What the monthly rate buys also differs. NEO's record says teleoperation yes: 1X staff can drive it with the owner's permission for tasks it cannot do alone. Isaac 1 is partial: Weave says remote operators step in when the robot cannot finish. Walker S2 and Digit are both partial in our record. On a subscription you pay every month for a machine and, some of the time, for the person behind it; [The $20,000 body](/blog/the-20000-dollar-body/) goes through the NEO sheet line by line.

## No one publishes a lead time in weeks

The lead-time field is filled on all 42 records, and not one entry contains a number of days, weeks or months. This is what the field holds instead.

| What the lead-time field says | Records | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Stock exists now: in stock, ships now, distributor stock | 16 | [Unitree R1](/robots/unitree-r1/), [Noetix N2](/robots/noetix-n2/), [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/) |
| Sales or enterprise language | 11 | [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/), [Fourier GR-3](/robots/fourier-gr-3/), [NAO](/robots/aldebaran-nao/) |
| Preorder, no date | 5 | [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/), [Z-Bot](/robots/k-scale-z-bot/), [Dobot Atom](/robots/dobot-atom/) |
| Ships from or in China, no timing | 4 | [EngineAI PM01](/robots/engineai-pm01/), [EngineAI T800](/robots/engineai-t800/) |
| A year, or a season and a year | 3 | NEO, Isaac 1, Atlas |
| Backordered, built to order, or listed but not orderable | 3 | [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/), [Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/), Unitree H2 |

"In stock" is the most common entry, on 10 records, and it is a claim about a shelf, not about your door. The [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) is "backordered, ships when restocked" on [Unitree](/companies/unitree/)'s own store, with no restock date. The three records with a date give a year. NEO says US deliveries start in 2026. Isaac 1 says California in autumn 2026 and the wider United States through 2027. [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) says select early adopters get [Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/) in 2027, and has no order page. A year is a promise about the calendar. A lead time is a promise about your order. The record holds three of the first and none of the second.

## One warranty, one shipping cost, twelve configurations

The warranty field is filled once in 42 records: NEO, three years on the Early Access purchase. Forty-one records, including every machine above $20,000 and every distributor and marketplace listing, say nothing. The shipping-cost field is also filled once. Unitree lists $300 to $1,200 for the G1, which is 2.2 to 8.9 percent on top of the $13,500 base price, the only record where the landed cost can be worked out from the seller's page. The [EngineAI PM01](/robots/engineai-pm01/) note is the other side of that: bought mostly through Chinese marketplaces, which means import duty and no local support.

Configurations are the field that moves the price most and appears least. Five records list named configurations, 12 in total: three each for the [Unitree R1](/robots/unitree-r1/) and the G1, two each for the [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/), [Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/) and [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/). The spread from the bottom configuration to the top is 1.38 times on the R1, 1.50 on the Reachy Mini, 1.71 on the T1, 1.97 on the Reachy 2 and 5.47 on the G1, whose ladder we took apart in [Unitree G1 at $13,500](/blog/unitree-g1-cheap-one-cannot-run-your-code/). Thirteen records give a range without naming what sits at either end. The other 29 give one number and no configuration, so you do not know what the number is for.

## Where it ships from, and whether it ships to you

The shipping-regions field mentions a route outside the home market on 27 records. Nineteen say "Global" with no qualifier. Eight hang a condition on it, and the condition is the part that costs money. Four say China, then "Global via freight": the PM01, [AgiBot Lingxi X2](/robots/agibot-lingxi-x2/), [Noetix N2](/robots/noetix-n2/) and [Dobot Atom](/robots/dobot-atom/). You arrange the freight. Three say China, then "Global via sales": [Fourier GR-2](/robots/fourier-gr-2/), [Fourier GR-3](/robots/fourier-gr-3/) and the Walker S2; the [Fourier](/companies/fourier/) note says institutional sales only, with no North American retail channel. The [Kondo KHR-3HV](/robots/kondo-khr-3hv/) ships from Japan through hobby dealers.

Seven records ship inside China only, among them the [EngineAI T800](/robots/engineai-t800/) and the [Chery Mornine](/robots/chery-mornine/), both on JD.com. Four ship to the United States only: the two home robots, Digit, and the $999 [Z-Bot](/robots/k-scale-z-bot/). Four ship nowhere.

## Who you are actually paying

| Channel | Records | Official price | Reported price | Estimate | No published price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maker's own store | 17 | 8 | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| Quote from sales | 8 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 2 |
| Authorised distributor | 7 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 1 |
| Marketplace | 5 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Waitlist | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Not for sale | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| All | 42 | 8 | 26 | 1 | 7 |

Every official price in the record comes from a maker's own store, and even there it is a minority. Nine of the 17 store entries carry a price we could only confirm in trade press or a reseller listing, the [Unitree R1](/robots/unitree-r1/), both AgiBot store machines and the [Noetix N2](/robots/noetix-n2/) among them. Outside the maker's store, none of the 18 prices is official.

Twelve records, 7 distributor and 5 marketplace, are sold by someone other than the maker. The names that recur: Robotopian on 3 records, the [Fourier N1](/robots/fourier-n1/), the [Robotera Q5](/robots/robotera-q5/) and the [PNDbotics Adam](/robots/pndbotics-adam/); JD.com on 3, the R1 note, the T800 and the Mornine. Then RBTX for the Q5, RobotShop and Amazon for the [ROBOTIS MINI](/robots/robotis-mini/), AliExpress for the R1, and K-Robotics, Generation Robots and Robots International for the [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/). The T1 note says the price varies by reseller. The [Booster K1](/robots/booster-k1/) note says reported prices differ by a factor of two depending on seller and configuration, and [Booster Robotics](/companies/booster-robotics/) publishes neither. The T800 note has one trade listing at $25,000 and another at $40,500 to $80,800. A distributor price is a real price from a real shelf. It is not the same shelf as the next distributor's.

## What to get in writing before the deposit

In order of how often the field is blank in our record, most blank first.

1. Warranty term and what it covers, blank on 41 of 42. Months, parts, labour, and who pays freight on a repair.
2. Shipping cost to your address and who clears customs, blank on 41 of 42. "Global via freight" means you do.
3. Deposit terms, blank on 40 of 42. Refundable or not, until when, and against which configuration.
4. Subscription end terms, blank on 38 of 42. What happens to the machine, the software and the data when you stop paying, and how much of the work a remote operator does.
5. The named configuration, blank on 37 of 42. The price is for a version; get the version's name and what it leaves out.
6. A delivery month, blank on 42 of 42. A year is not a lead time.

If the seller answers all six, $200 or $250 is a cheap way to hold a place. If the seller answers none, the sheet is still blank, and the deposit should stay in your account until it is filled in.

## Sources
- Unitree G1 in the Unitree store, https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-g1 (Unitree)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X)
- Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot, https://thenextweb.com/news/weave-robotics-isaac-1-home-robot (The Next Web)
- Booster T1 humanoid robot, https://www.generationrobots.com/en/404278-booster-t1-humanoid-robot.html (Generation Robots)
- Robotera Q5 humanoid robot, 44 DOF, https://rbtx.com/en-US/components/humanoid/robotera-q5-humanoid-robot-44dof (RBTX Marketplace)
- Robotopian, https://robotopian.com/ (Robotopian)
- Humanoid robot prices, 2026 guide, https://robotsourced.com/pricing/humanoid-robots/ (RobotSourced)
- Reachy 2, the open-source humanoid for embodied AI, https://pollen-robotics.com/reachy-2/ (Pollen Robotics)

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# Europe's humanoids: who builds them and what you can order
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/europes-humanoids-who-builds-them-and-what-you-can-order/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Explainer | 1732 words

> 31 of the 182 humanoids on record come from seven European countries. Three can be ordered, two have a price, and the dearest of those is $75,000 for a robot that does not walk.

Europe has 31 humanoids on our record, from 19 makers in seven countries. Three of the 31 can be ordered today. Two of those have a price. The one full-size machine among them, [Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/), costs $70,000 and rolls on wheels. Everything else European is a quote, a pilot, a research platform or a museum piece. For a buyer or a lab that wants to stay on home soil, that is the whole menu.

The seven countries are France (8 robots), Germany (7), Spain (6), Italy (4), the United Kingdom (3), Poland (2) and Sweden (1). We have left out Russia (2 robots) and Turkey (1), which the data tags separately, and [1X](/companies/1x/), which the record files under the United States with engineering in Moss, Norway.

## Three you can order, and one of them sits on a desk

The 44 orderable humanoids on this site are the ones marked in stock or on preorder. Europe supplies three, all covered in [the availability gap piece](/blog/44-you-can-order-138-you-cannot/) as two French and one Polish.

[Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/) from [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/) of Bordeaux, part of Hugging Face since April 2025, is in stock and built to order. The official price is $70,000, with a stationary one-arm configuration at $38,000 and the full robot with mobile base at $75,000. It has two arms, an expressive head and a wheeled base, and it does not walk. Hardware and software are open source. The record marks teleoperation as yes: it is designed for VR teleoperation and for collecting data to train vision-language-action models, so what it does on its own is what you train it to do.

[Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/), from the same maker, is on preorder at $299 for the tethered Lite version and $449 for the wireless version with battery and on-board compute. It is 28 cm tall, a head and torso, and not a walking humanoid. It is on the list because it is the cheapest entry into the same open stack as its big sibling, a point [the home robots piece](/blog/humanoid-robots-for-your-home-what-you-can-actually-get/) already makes.

[Clone Alpha](/robots/clone-alpha/) from [Clone Robotics](/companies/clone-robotics/) in Wroclaw is the third. It was announced for preorder in December 2024 with a first batch of 279 units, and as of the data date it has no public price and no confirmed delivery. Its status is concept. The technology demonstrator, [Protoclone](/robots/clone-protoclone/), was shown in February 2025 suspended from a ceiling, twitching, not walking. A preorder here is a deposit on an idea.

Beyond those three, 13 European machines are enterprise only, which means a sales conversation rather than a buy button. Two are discontinued and 13 are not for sale at all.

## The makers, country by country

| Maker | Country | Machines on record | Orderable | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/) | FR | Reachy 2, Reachy Mini | Yes, both | $70,000 ($38,000 to $75,000 by configuration); $299 to $449 |
| [Clone Robotics](/companies/clone-robotics/) | PL | Clone Alpha, Protoclone | Alpha on preorder | No public price |
| [Aldebaran](/companies/aldebaran/) | FR | NAO, Romeo | NAO on quote, per institution | Record notes roughly $9,000 to $15,000 for NAO6, by region and reseller |
| [PAL Robotics](/companies/pal-robotics/) | ES | REEM-A, REEM-B, REEM, REEM-C, TALOS, Kangaroo | REEM-C and TALOS to labs, on request | Not public |
| [IIT](/companies/iit/) | IT | iCub, ergoCub, WALK-MAN | iCub built at cost for partner labs | Historically around EUR 250,000 per the record |
| [Engineered Arts](/companies/engineered-arts/) | GB | Ameca, RoboThespian | Sold and rented, on request | Not public |
| [Oversonic Robotics](/companies/oversonic-robotics/) | IT | RoBee | Enterprise only | No public price |
| [Neura Robotics](/companies/neura-robotics/) | DE | 4NE-1 | No, pilots only | No public price |
| [Hexagon](/companies/hexagon/) | SE | AEON | No, pilots only | No public price |
| [Humanoid](/companies/humanoid/) | GB | HMND 01 | No, pilots announced | No public price |
| [Enchanted Tools](/companies/enchanted-tools/) | FR | Mirokai | No, pilots | No public price |
| [Devanthro](/companies/devanthro/) | DE | Robody, Roboy | No, Robody in pilots | No public price |
| [Wandercraft](/companies/wandercraft/) | FR | Calvin-40 | No, prototype | No public price |
| [Agile Robots](/companies/agile-robots/) | DE | Agile ONE | No, prototype | No public price |
| [DLR](/companies/dlr/) | DE | Rollin' Justin, TORO | No, research | None |
| [Inria](/companies/inria/) | FR | Poppy Humanoid | No, open design | Kits several thousand euros per the record |
| [InMoov](/companies/inmoov/) | FR | InMoov | No, you print it | Parts roughly $1,500 to $3,000 per the record |
| [University of Bonn](/companies/university-of-bonn/) | DE | NimbRo-OP2X | No, open design | None |

The nineteenth maker is [Google DeepMind](/companies/google-deepmind/) in London, which has no machine of its own on record; it builds the Gemini Robotics models and runs them on other people's bodies.

Two of the 19 are in the acquired column. Pollen went to Hugging Face. [Aldebaran](/companies/aldebaran/), which created [NAO](/robots/aldebaran-nao/) in 2005, was bought by SoftBank, sold to United Robotics Group in 2022, entered insolvency in February 2025 and was taken over later that year; the record says NAO production continued. Enchanted Tools went through financial restructuring in 2025. [PAL Robotics](/companies/pal-robotics/) in Barcelona, building humanoids since 2004, is the longest-running maker here and the only one with six machines on record, from the chess-playing [REEM-A](/robots/pal-reem-a/) of 2005 to the 175 cm, 32-DOF [TALOS](/robots/pal-talos/) sold to labs since 2017.

## Nearly half is research and almost a quarter is open

Of the 31 European machines, 13 are categorised as research and 9 have research as their status. Six come from research institutes: [DLR](/companies/dlr/)'s [Rollin' Justin](/robots/dlr-rollin-justin/) and [TORO](/robots/dlr-toro/), Inria's [Poppy](/robots/poppy-humanoid/), and [IIT](/companies/iit/)'s [iCub](/robots/iit-icub/), [ergoCub](/robots/iit-ergocub/) and [WALK-MAN](/robots/iit-walk-man/). One is a university machine, Bonn's [NimbRo-OP2X](/robots/nimbro-op2x/), a RoboCup winner whose record says fully autonomous soccer with no teleoperation. One, [InMoov](/robots/inmoov/), is a community project. Twenty-two come from startups and one, AEON, from a listed conglomerate.

Seven of the 31 are open source: iCub, InMoov, NimbRo-OP2X, Poppy, Reachy 2, Reachy Mini and [Roboy](/robots/devanthro-roboy/). That is 7 of the 24 open-source humanoids in the whole database, from a region with 17 percent of the robots. If openness is what you are buying, Europe over-delivers.

Three machines are retired, all older bipeds: REEM-A, [REEM-B](/robots/pal-reem-b/) and WALK-MAN, which competed in the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge finals. Two are discontinued: the wheeled [REEM](/robots/pal-reem/) service robot and Aldebaran's [Romeo](/robots/aldebaran-romeo/), an elderly-care project that ended around 2017. Five were first revealed in 2025: [AEON](/robots/hexagon-aeon/), [Agile ONE](/robots/agile-robots-agile-one/), [Calvin-40](/robots/wandercraft-calvin-40/), Protoclone and Reachy Mini. Of those five, only the desk robot has a price.

## Where European humanoids actually work

Our 52 deployments include six on European soil, counting Switzerland and Hungary: two in Germany, one each in France, Italy, Switzerland and Hungary. Four use European machines. [Neura](/companies/neura-robotics/)'s [4NE-1](/robots/neura-4ne-1/) has been in a pilot at Schaeffler plants since September 2024, with mixed autonomy and no published scale. Hexagon's AEON was announced in June 2025 with Pilatus Aircraft in Stans and Schaeffler as pilot partners, also mixed autonomy. NAO's classroom fleet, more than 13,000 units reported sold by 2018, and iCub's copies in more than 30 labs are the other two, and they are fleets rather than sites.

The other two European deployments run American robots. [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/) from [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) was announced for Schaeffler's plants in October 2024, when Schaeffler took a minority stake. [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) from [Apptronik](/companies/apptronik/) has been piloted at Mercedes-Benz in Kecskemet, Hungary since March 2024 and later in Berlin, the first announced humanoid pilot at a European carmaker. None of the six European deployments publishes a unit count. Chinese robots have no deployment outside China in our record; American robots have three abroad, and two of them are in European factories.

The fifth deployment of a European machine is abroad: [Ameca](/robots/engineered-arts-ameca/) at the Museum of the Future in Dubai, in the entertainment line where [Engineered Arts](/companies/engineered-arts/) has sold and rented [RoboThespian](/robots/engineered-arts-robothespian/) since 2005. RoboThespian runs telepresence and scripted performance modes; Ameca's record marks teleoperation as partial. [Robody](/robots/devanthro-robody/), the Munich care avatar piloted in German nursing homes, is operated by remote caregivers through VR and claims no autonomy at all. Across the 31, teleoperation is yes for 6, partial for 14, unknown for 4 and no for 7, and all 7 with no are research bipeds or retired machines.

## Europe against China and the United States

| | Europe (7 countries) | China | United States |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robots on record | 31 | 65 | 44 |
| Makers | 19 | 30 | 33 |
| Orderable (in stock or preorder) | 3 | 31 | 5 |
| Deployments located there | 6, including CH and HU | 22 | 16 |
| Deployments by makers from there | 5 | 22 | 18 |

The column that matters to a European buyer is the orderable one. China's 31 orderable machines, Europe's 3, and the United States' 5 set the choice: a full-size legged humanoid with a price, delivered to a European address, is today a Chinese machine, and [the cost piece](/blog/how-much-does-a-humanoid-robot-cost/) lists them. The two European factory deployments with any autonomy claim run American machines on lease or partnership terms, not on a price list. The European makers pitching factories, Neura, Hexagon, [Humanoid](/companies/humanoid/) with its [HMND 01](/robots/humanoid-hmnd-01/), Wandercraft and Agile Robots, are all in pilots or prototypes with no public price and no unit count.

## The regulatory note: 2 August 2026

Our events record has one European regulation entry. Under the EU AI Act, obligations for high-risk AI systems, which include AI safety components of machinery and robots, were scheduled to apply from 2 August 2026, with the Commission's Digital Omnibus proposal seeking to delay parts of that schedule. The same entry notes that humanoids sold in the EU also fall under the Machinery Regulation from January 2027. The record does not say whether the delay was adopted, and we do not know more than that. What it means in practice: any maker selling into the EU, from Shenzhen or Bordeaux, will be asked which of these rules its machine meets, and a European maker has no exemption from the paperwork just for being European.

## What a European buyer can do this year

If you need a priced machine from a European maker, the list is Reachy 2 at $38,000 to $75,000 and Reachy Mini at $299 to $449, both open source, neither walking, the larger one built around teleoperation. If you need a classroom or research biped, ask Aldebaran for a NAO quote and PAL for a REEM-C or TALOS quote; our record puts a NAO6 at roughly $9,000 to $15,000 depending on region and reseller, and gives no figure for PAL. If you need a full-size research platform with open code, IIT builds iCub at cost for partner labs. If you need a humanoid on a factory floor, no European maker can sell you one today; you can join a pilot with Neura, Hexagon or Humanoid, or do what Schaeffler and Mercedes-Benz did and bring in an American machine. Whichever you choose, ask the seller in writing how the machine stands under the AI Act and the Machinery Regulation, because the deadline in our record has already passed and the delay is a proposal.

## Sources
- Reachy 2, the open-source humanoid for embodied AI, https://pollen-robotics.com/reachy-2/ (Pollen Robotics)
- Hugging Face's open-source desktop Pollen robot starts at $299, https://www.automate.org/robotics/industry-insights/hugging-faces-open-source-desktop-pollen-robot-starts-at-299 (Association for Advancing Automation)
- NAO, https://www.aldebaran.com/en/nao (Aldebaran)
- TALOS, https://pal-robotics.com/robot/talos/ (PAL Robotics)
- iCub, https://icub.iit.it/ (IIT)
- Neura Robotics, https://neura-robotics.com/ (Neura Robotics)
- Ameca, https://engineeredarts.com/robot/ameca/ (Engineered Arts)
- EU AI Act implementation timeline, https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/implementation-timeline/ (Future of Life Institute)

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# Figure AI: what $39 billion has shown so far
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/figure-ai-what-39-billion-dollars-has-shown-so-far/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Opinion | 1439 words

> Four rounds, $1,754,000,000 raised, one named customer, no price and no unit count. The record on the most valuable humanoid company, generation by generation.

Figure AI has raised $1,754,000,000 in four rounds and was valued at $39,000,000,000 on 16 September 2025, the highest valuation in our record by a factor of 3.9. Against that, the record holds one named customer, three deployments with no unit count between them, no price and nothing you can order. Both halves are true. This is what sits between them.

## Three bodies in two years

[Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) was founded by Brett Adcock in 2022 and came out of stealth in March 2023 with [Figure 01](/robots/figure-01/). From the first walking video in October 2023 to the Figure 03 reveal in October 2025, it showed three bodies in two years.

| Generation | First shown | Height | Weight | Hand DOF | Status | Teleoperation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Figure 01](/robots/figure-01/) | October 2023 | 168 cm | 60 kg | not published | Retired | No |
| [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) | 6 August 2024 | 168 cm | 70 kg | 16 | Pilot, superseded | No |
| [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) | 9 October 2025 | 168 cm | 60 kg | 16 | Limited production | No |

The frame has not moved: 168 cm, a 20 kg payload, five hours of runtime and a 1.2 m/s walk on every generation. The battery went from 2.25 kWh to 2.3 kWh. What changed is everything around the frame. Figure 02 added six RGB cameras, onboard speech, five-finger hands with 16 degrees of freedom and three times the compute of Figure 01. Figure 03 added fingertip tactile sensors that Figure says register about 3 grams, cameras in the palms, a soft textile cover, wireless charging through the feet, and a body designed to be built on a line rather than by hand. Figure says Figure 03 is 9 percent lighter than Figure 02; our record rounds the two to 70 kg and 60 kg.

The hand count stayed at 16 from Figure 02 to Figure 03. Why that is the number to watch is covered in [why hands are the hardest part](/blog/why-hands-are-the-hardest-part/).

## The money and the milestones, by date

| Date | What happened | Money |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Founded in Sunnyvale, California | |
| March 2023 | Out of stealth with Figure 01 | |
| 24 May 2023 | Series A, led by Parkway Venture Capital | $70,000,000 |
| 12 July 2023 | Series A extension, Intel Capital | $9,000,000 |
| October 2023 | Figure 01 first walking video | |
| 18 January 2024 | BMW Manufacturing signs for Spartanburg | |
| 29 February 2024 | Series B, plus a collaboration with OpenAI | $675,000,000 at $2,600,000,000 |
| 13 March 2024 | Figure 01 hands over an apple in an OpenAI-powered demo | |
| 6 August 2024 | Figure 02 unveiled | |
| August 2024 | Figure 02 starts at BMW Spartanburg | |
| 4 February 2025 | Figure ends the OpenAI collaboration | |
| 20 February 2025 | Helix published | |
| February 2025 | Package-sorting pilot for an unnamed logistics customer | |
| 15 March 2025 | BotQ announced: 12,000 robots a year | |
| 16 September 2025 | Series C, led by Parkway Venture Capital | over $1,000,000,000 at $39,000,000,000 |
| 9 October 2025 | Figure 03 unveiled | |
| November 2025 | BMW Spartanburg deployment ends | |

Three things stand out in the dates. The BMW agreement came six weeks before the Series B, and the round came with the [OpenAI](/companies/openai/) collaboration attached. Eleven months later Figure ended that collaboration, citing a breakthrough in in-house AI, and published Helix 16 days after. And the Series C closed 23 days before Figure 03 was shown, so the $39 billion was priced on Figure 02 in the field and a third body still under wraps.

## What $39 billion is measured against

Our funding file holds 55 equity rounds to humanoid makers, worth $6,307,300,000 where the amount was disclosed. Figure's four rounds are $1,754,000,000 of that, 27.8 percent. The two largest equity rounds in the database are both Figure's. The next highest valuation we record is [1X](/companies/1x/) at $10,000,000,000 in September 2025, then [Physical Intelligence](/companies/physical-intelligence/) at $5,600,000,000.

The step from $2.6 billion to $39 billion is a multiple of 15 in 565 days. Divide the valuation by what exists. Three generations of body: $13,000,000,000 per generation. One named customer: $39,000,000,000 per customer. Published units: zero, so no number at all.

That is not an argument that the valuation is wrong. Venture pricing is a bet on what comes next, and Figure's investors include [Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/), Microsoft, Intel Capital, Salesforce, Qualcomm Ventures and Brookfield, who can see things we cannot. It is an argument about what the public record can support, which is a different question.

## What is proved

Three deployments carry the Figure name, out of 52 in the database.

The one that counts is BMW. Figure 02 loaded sheet metal parts into fixtures on the X3 body shop line at Spartanburg, South Carolina, from August 2024. Our record marks the work autonomous. BMW confirmed the pilot, which matters: it is the only Figure claim in our record with a second party attached. Figure describes it as about 11 months of production work during 2025. It ended in November 2025 when Figure moved to Figure 03, and the fleet size was never published. The record holds 18 automotive deployments; three are marked autonomous, and BMW Spartanburg is one of them.

The second is package sorting on a conveyor at a logistics facility from February 2025, using Helix, marked autonomous. Figure has not named the customer.

The third is the Figure 03 home alpha: dishwashers, laundry and tidying in private homes, used to collect Helix training data. Our record marks it mixed. Figure has not said how many homes or how many robots. All three home deployments in our record, the two [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) rows included, are marked mixed.

So the ledger reads: one confirmed customer, one unnamed customer, one data-collection programme. 46 of the 52 deployments in our database name the customer. Figure names one of its three. Six of the 52 give a unit count. Figure gives none.

## What "no teleoperation" means on these records

All three Figure records carry teleoperation: no. Only 31 of 182 records do, and once the retired, discontinued and research platforms are stripped out, five working machines are left. Two are Figure's. The others are [Galbot G1](/robots/galbot-g1/), [Kawada Nextage](/robots/kawada-nextage/) and [Robotis OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/).

Read the note beside the flag. For Figure 01, Figure stated the March 2024 demo was fully autonomous and at 1.0x speed. For Figure 02 and Figure 03, Figure says Helix runs onboard with no teleoperation, and that the training data was collected with teleoperation and human video. Helix itself, as published on 20 February 2025, pairs a 7 billion parameter vision-language model with an 80 Hz control policy on the robot's own GPUs and controls the whole upper body.

Every one of those statements is Figure's. The autonomy evidence field for Figure 03 says independent reporting of the home alpha is limited. For Figure 02 the evidence is Figure's own account of BMW, plus BMW's confirmation that the pilot happened. Nobody outside the company has published a timed, counted observation of a Figure robot working unassisted. The flag says no. The support for it is a maker statement and one customer nod. That is more than most records have, and less than the valuation implies.

## What you cannot get

The buy record for Figure 03 reads: channel not for sale, lead time partner deployments only, ships nowhere. Figure 02 is enterprise only; Figure 01 and Figure 03 are not for sale. No Figure machine has ever had a price. Third-party guides put Figure 03 at around $150,000, and our verdict on that estimate stands: it tells you more about the estimators than about Figure.

Set against that is BotQ. On 15 March 2025 Figure said the plant would start at 12,000 robots a year with a path to 100,000 over four years. Figure 03 is built there from late 2025, which is why its status reads limited production. Capacity is a claim about a building. The record contains no shipped number to set beside it. [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/) logged its 1,000th unit in January 2025. Figure has logged none, which does not mean none exist. It means nobody has said.

## What would change the assessment

Three things, any of which would move Figure from company to watch to product.

A price. Any list price, lease rate or per-hour figure from Figure itself, in the way [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/) is listed at roughly $8,500 a month.

A customer count. A second named customer, a unit count from BMW, or a BotQ output figure. Six rows in our deployment file carry a number. Figure needs one.

An independent observation. A reporter, an auditor or a customer describing a Figure robot doing a shift, with the operator count stated.

Until one of those appears the honest listing is: the best-funded humanoid company on record, three bodies, one confirmed customer, marked autonomous on its own word, nothing to buy. If you are deciding whether to wait for it, wait for the number, not the next body.

## Sources
- Figure AI, https://www.figure.ai/ (Figure AI)
- Figure AI, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_AI (Wikipedia)
- Figure newsroom, https://www.figure.ai/news (Figure AI)
- Helix: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Generalist Humanoid Control, https://www.figure.ai/news/helix (Figure AI)
- Introducing Figure 03, https://www.figure.ai/news/introducing-figure-03 (Figure AI)
- Figure AI valued at $39 billion in latest funding round, https://www.reuters.com/business/figure-ai-valued-39-billion-latest-funding-round-2025-09-16/ (Reuters)
- Robotics startup Figure raises $675 mln from Microsoft, Nvidia, other big techs, https://www.reuters.com/technology/robotics-startup-figure-raises-675-mln-microsoft-nvidia-other-big-techs-2024-02-29/ (Reuters)
- Humanoid robots for sale: 2026 guide, https://theresarobotforthat.com/blog/humanoid-robots-for-sale/ (There's A Robot For That)

================================================================
# How a humanoid robot works: actuators, compute, sensors and the model
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/how-a-humanoid-robot-works-actuators-compute-sensors-and-the-model/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Explainer | 1777 words

> Of 182 humanoids on record, 178 say what moves the joints and 43 say what computer is inside. The further a layer sits from the metal, the less the maker tells you about it.

A humanoid is four layers. Actuators move the joints. Sensors see and feel. A computer runs the maths. A model decides what to do next. Our 182 records describe the first layer 178 times and the third layer 43 times. Makers are precise about motors and vague about brains, and the vagueness sits exactly where a human operator can hide.

## The four layers and how often anyone describes them

Field coverage across the 182 records, with the most common answer.

| Layer | Field | Records filled | Most common answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actuators | `actuation` | 178 of 182 | "electric" with nothing else (87) |
| Joints | `dof` | 83 | 28 joints (6 machines); median 32 |
| Compute | `compute` | 43 | a generic "onboard computer" (7); Nvidia Jetson (6) |
| Sensors | `sensors` | 64 | a camera (47); an IMU (23) |
| Model | `ai_stack` | 78 | reinforcement-learning locomotion (17) |
| Human in the loop | `teleoperation` | 148 (34 unknown) | partial (90) |

Only 18 of the 182 fill all five technical fields, and 56 fill none of the four beyond actuation. Of the 44 machines you can order, 25 publish a joint count, 9 name the computer and 10 list the sensors. You are asked to buy a body whose spec sheet stops at the motors.

## Actuators: electric has won and hydraulics are in the museum

The actuator is the motor plus gearing at each joint. It sets what the robot can lift, how fast it moves and what wears out first. Of the 178 records that describe it, 170 are electric only, 7 mention hydraulics and 1 ([NAVER AMBIDEX](/robots/naver-ambidex/)) is cable-driven.

The hydraulic seven are mostly history. The [hydraulic Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-hydraulic/) from [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) had 28 hydraulic joints and was retired on 16 April 2024 after 11 years, replaced by the [electric Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/). Its predecessor [PETMAN](/robots/boston-dynamics-petman/) was hydraulic and tethered. [WABOT-1](/robots/wabot-1/) from 1973 had hydraulic legs. [Nadia](/robots/ihmc-nadia/) at IHMC has some hydraulic joints. [Phoenix](/robots/sanctuary-phoenix/) from [Sanctuary AI](/companies/sanctuary-ai/) puts miniature hydraulic hands on an electric body. The last two are [Clone Robotics](/companies/clone-robotics/)' [Protoclone](/robots/clone-protoclone/) and [Clone Alpha](/robots/clone-alpha/), artificial muscles driven by a water pump; the Alpha has no delivered unit and no public price.

Electric wins because it runs on a battery, does not leak and is cheap in volume. The word on its own tells you nothing: 87 records say it and stop. Only 5 give a torque figure: the [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) at up to 120 Nm in the knee, the [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) at up to 360 Nm, [Fourier GR-1](/robots/fourier-gr-1/) and [Xiaomi CyberOne](/robots/xiaomi-cyberone/) at 300 Nm, [AgiBot Raise A1](/robots/agibot-raise-a1/) at 350 Nm. Five name linear actuators, among them [Optimus Gen 1](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-1/) and [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) from [Apptronik](/companies/apptronik/). Four are tendon-driven: the three [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) generations from [1X](/companies/1x/) and Roboy. Six say in-house or custom. The torque number is the one that predicts payload, and 173 records do not give it.

## Joints: 83 publish a count and the famous machines do not

Degrees of freedom is the number of independently moving joints. 83 records give a figure. The minimum is 12 ([Berkeley Humanoid](/robots/berkeley-humanoid/)), the median is 32, the mean is 35.7. The maximum is 200 for Protoclone, a musculoskeletal android with over 1,000 artificial muscles and not comparable; leave it out and the top is [Xpeng Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) at 82, then [HopeJR](/robots/hugging-face-hopejr/) at 66, an open-source kit on preorder at a $3,000 target price. 11 machines are under 20 joints, 24 are in the twenties, 18 in the thirties, 18 in the forties and 12 at 50 or more.

The count is silent on where the joints go: Iron puts 22 of its 82 in each hand. We covered that in [why hands are the hardest part](/blog/why-hands-are-the-hardest-part/). The count is also silent on the best-known machines. [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/), [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/), [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/), the electric Atlas, NEO, [Digit](/robots/agility-digit-v4/) and Apollo have no total joint count in our record. Among the 44 you can order, 25 publish one, with a median of 24. A high count is a bill of materials, not a capability: HopeJR publishes more joints than the electric Atlas record shows, and it is a hobby kit.

## Compute: 43 name a computer, 6 say Jetson, none say Thor

The computer runs the balance loop and, on newer machines, the network that turns camera frames into joint targets. 43 records name it. [Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/) Jetson appears 6 times: the G1 EDU, the H1 as an option, the [Unitree R1](/robots/unitree-r1/) EDU, [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/), [EngineAI PM01](/robots/engineai-pm01/) and [Hexagon AEON](/robots/hexagon-aeon/). Four of those specify the Orin generation. Jetson Thor, which Nvidia's own record says went on general sale in August 2025 at $3,499 for the developer kit, appears in no robot record at all.

Three run in-house silicon: Optimus Gen 1 and Gen 2 on a computer derived from [Tesla](/companies/tesla/)'s FSD chip, and Iron on three Xpeng Turing chips at about 2,250 TOPS. Only Iron and the G1 give a TOPS figure. Five name an Intel x86 part, from an Atom in [DARwIn-OP](/robots/darwin-op/) to a Core i7 in the H1. Two use a Raspberry Pi, two an Arduino, two a cloud brain ([EMIEW3](/robots/hitachi-emiew/) and AMBIDEX over 5G). Seven say only that there is an onboard computer. Figure 03's record says Helix runs onboard and details are not published.

The compute line decides who can run their own code. A Jetson with an open SDK is a computer you can log into; the G1 base ships an 8-core CPU and the 100-TOPS Orin NX is EDU only, the ladder in [the G1 article](/blog/unitree-g1-cheap-one-cannot-run-your-code/). An in-house chip is a computer the maker programs and you do not. 35 of the 44 buyable machines do not name theirs, so ask.

## Sensors: cameras on 47, touch on 8

Sensors are what the model gets to know. A camera gives pictures, a depth camera distance, lidar a 3D map for walking, an IMU the sense of falling, tactile sensors a feeling of grip. 64 records list sensors. 47 mention a camera, 23 an IMU, 17 a depth or stereo camera, 12 lidar, 15 microphones. 19 mention touch, force or pressure sensing, and 8 use the word tactile: Figure 03 with fingertip tactile sensors and palm cameras, Optimus Gen 2 with tactile fingertips and foot force sensors, [Fourier GR-3](/robots/fourier-gr-3/) with 31 pressure sensors in a soft skin. Five list cameras and nothing else.

The mix tells you what the maker thinks the model needs. The G1 ships a RealSense depth camera, a Livox lidar and a microphone array, the kit of a robot expected to map a room. Figure 02 lists six RGB cameras, microphones and speakers, and no depth camera or lidar: the bet that a vision-language-action model can work out distance from pixels. Digit carries depth cameras and lidar for warehouse aisles. Of the 44 you can order, 10 list any sensor at all.

## The model: 78 name software, 19 name a model, GR00T is on none

The model turns sensor data into joint commands. 78 records say something here. 17 say reinforcement-learning locomotion, meaning the walking was trained in simulation. 13 point to open software. 7 say VLA. 19 name a specific behaviour model: Helix on Figure 02 and 03, GO-1 on [AgiBot A2](/robots/agibot-yuanzheng-a2/) and [Genie G1](/robots/agibot-genie-g1/), [Google DeepMind](/companies/google-deepmind/)'s Gemini Robotics on Apollo and the electric Atlas, GraspVLA on [Galbot G1](/robots/galbot-g1/), Redwood on NEO, Xpeng's VLA on Iron, ERA-42 on [Robotera L7](/robots/robotera-l7/), Carbon on Phoenix, Tesla's end-to-end networks on Optimus, Huawei Pangu on [Leju Kuavo](/robots/leju-kuavo/), Huisi Kaiwu on [Tiangong 2.0](/robots/tiangong-2/), Ant Group's model on [Robbyant R1](/robots/robbyant-r1/), an in-house VLA on [Menteebot](/robots/mentee-menteebot/) and Stanford's shadowing transformer on [HumanPlus](/robots/humanplus/). Nvidia's GR00T N1, released 18 March 2025 as an open humanoid foundation model and shown on NEO that day, is the named stack of no robot in our data.

Of those 19 machines with a named model, 5 say teleoperation yes, 8 partial, 3 no and 3 unknown. The stack line and the human line belong together.

| Machine | Named model | Teleoperation | Autonomy evidence in the record |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) | Helix VLA, onboard | no; training data teleoperated | BMW Spartanburg sheet-metal loading, about 11 months in 2025, confirmed by BMW |
| [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) | Helix VLA | no; training uses teleoperation and human video | company videos of chores; independent reporting limited |
| [Galbot G1](/robots/galbot-g1/) | GraspVLA, GroceryVLA | no | autonomous picking in Beijing unmanned pharmacies, reported 2025 |
| [Atlas (electric)](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/) | large behaviour models with TRI; Gemini Robotics | partial; demos autonomous, training data includes teleoperation | parts sequencing video October 2024; Hyundai plant testing reported |
| [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) | Gemini Robotics plus Apptronik software | partial | Mercedes-Benz, GXO and Jabil pilots |
| [AgiBot A2](/robots/agibot-yuanzheng-a2/) | GO-1 VLA | partial; A2-D is a teleoperated data-collection variant | 106 km walk Suzhou to Shanghai, November 2025; factory logistics pilots |
| [Astribot S1](/robots/astribot-s1/) | VLA trained on teleoperated data | partial; launch video was a mix | household tasks in launch video; cooking demos 2025 |
| [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) | Tesla end-to-end networks | yes; We Robot units on 10 October 2024 remotely assisted | battery-cell sorting video; independent confirmation limited |
| [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) | Redwood and 1X World Model | yes; Expert Mode lets 1X staff drive it | launch reviewers found most tasks teleoperated |
| [Phoenix](/robots/sanctuary-phoenix/) | Carbon, teleoperation-first | yes | Magna and Mark's pilots, company-reported |
| [Genie G1](/robots/agibot-genie-g1/) | GO-1 | yes; built for teleoperated data collection | table-top demos |
| [Xpeng Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) | Xpeng VLA and VLT | unknown | catwalk gait 2025; leg cut open on 6 November 2025 to show nobody was inside |
| [Optimus V3](/robots/tesla-optimus-v3/) | Tesla end-to-end networks | unknown | none |

A human can enter at three points. Live, through a controller or VR rig: the We Robot units and NEO's Expert Mode. In the data, where the model's training runs came from people in rigs; Figure, Boston Dynamics, AgiBot and Sanctuary all say so. And in the edit, where a video shows only the runs that worked. The records that say "no" and have someone other than the maker confirming the work are Figure 02, where BMW confirmed the pilot, and Galbot G1, where media reported the pharmacies. That is two.

## How to read any spec sheet

Start at the bottom. Actuation: is there a torque or payload number, or just the word electric? 173 of 178 have no torque figure. Joints: is the total given, and how many are in the hands? Compute: is the chip named, and can you log into it? Jetson with an SDK means yes; FSD-derived or Turing means no; "onboard computer" means ask. Sensors: is there anything beyond cameras, and does the hand feel? Model: is a model named, and does the same page say who collected its training data and how? Then the flag: does the maker state that no operator is involved in the demo, and has a customer, not the maker, confirmed a task done that way? Deciding between two machines, prefer the one whose sheet answers all six over the one with the better video. In our data a named computer is rarer than a machine you can order: 43 against 44.

## Sources
- Unitree G1 product page, https://www.unitree.com/g1 (Unitree)
- Helix: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Generalist Humanoid Control, https://www.figure.ai/news/helix (Figure AI)
- Farewell to HD Atlas, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9EM5_VFlt8 (Boston Dynamics (YouTube))
- Xpeng newsroom, https://www.xpeng.com/news (Xpeng)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X)
- Tesla AI and Robotics, https://www.tesla.com/AI (Tesla)
- NVIDIA Isaac GR00T, https://developer.nvidia.com/isaac/gr00t (Nvidia)
- Galbot official site, https://www.galbot.com/ (Galbot)

================================================================
# How long does a humanoid robot actually run
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/how-long-does-a-humanoid-robot-actually-run/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Explainer | 1957 words

> 22 of 182 humanoids on record quote a runtime. The claims run from 1 to 8 hours with a median of 4, and of the 44 machines you can order, 4 say anything at all.

Our database holds 182 humanoid robots. 22 of them say how long they run on a charge. The claims go from 1 hour to 8, with a median of 4. Seven records give the battery in kilowatt-hours. Of the 44 machines you can order today, 4 quote a runtime and 1 quotes a battery size. Not one record, of 182, gives a charge time or a cycle count.

## Twenty-two say how long. 160 do not.

A runtime figure is the easiest specification a maker can publish. It needs a stopwatch. 12 percent of our records have one.

The silence is spread evenly. China has 65 humanoids on record and 8 publish a runtime. The United States has 44 and publishes 6. Japan has 24 and publishes 2. Among the 40 enterprise-only machines, 7 quote hours; among the 78 not for sale, 7; among the 44 you can order, 4. Machines sold through a sales conversation are slightly more talkative than the ones with a checkout button, the wrong way round for a buyer.

Some of the loudest records say nothing. [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/)'s [Walker S1](/robots/ubtech-walker-s1/) has six deployment rows in our data, more than any other machine, and [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/) from [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) has four; neither record gives a runtime or a battery figure. [Tesla](/companies/tesla/) published a 2.3 kWh battery for [Optimus Gen 1](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-1/) in 2022 and has never published hours for any generation; the [Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) record mentions batteries only because the robot sorts battery cells at Fremont. [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/)' electric [Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/) says nothing. [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) gives both figures for the [G1](/robots/unitree-g1/), a pack size but no hours for the [H1](/robots/unitree-h1/), and nothing for the H2 or R1.

## One hour to eight, and the eights are mostly on wheels

Every quoted runtime in our data, with the two records that give a battery but no hours at the bottom.

| Machine | Maker | Form | Weight | Quoted runtime | Battery | Availability | Teleoperation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Kepler K2 Bumblebee](/robots/kepler-k2-bumblebee/) | [Kepler](/companies/kepler/) | biped | 85 kg | 8 h | 2.33 kWh | enterprise only | partial |
| [Pudu D7](/robots/pudu-d7/) | [Pudu](/companies/pudu/) | wheeled | 45 kg | 8 h | not given | enterprise only | partial |
| [REEM](/robots/pal-reem/) | [PAL Robotics](/companies/pal-robotics/) | wheeled | 100 kg | 8 h | not given | discontinued | partial |
| [AIDOL](/robots/aidol/) | [New Technology Coalition](/companies/new-technology-coalition/) | biped | not given | 6 h | not given | not for sale | unknown |
| [EVE](/robots/1x-eve/) | [1X](/companies/1x/) | wheeled | 86 kg | 6 h | not given | discontinued | yes |
| [GAC GoMate](/robots/gac-gomate/) | [GAC](/companies/gac/) | wheeled | not given | 6 h | not given | not for sale | unknown |
| [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) | [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) | biped | 60 kg | 5 h | 2.3 kWh | not for sale | no |
| [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) | [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) | biped | 70 kg | 5 h | 2.25 kWh | enterprise only | no |
| [Figure 01](/robots/figure-01/) | [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) | biped | 60 kg | 5 h | 2.25 kWh | not for sale | no |
| [Menteebot](/robots/mentee-menteebot/) | [Mentee Robotics](/companies/mentee-robotics/) | biped | 70 kg | 5 h | not given | enterprise only | partial |
| [AEON](/robots/hexagon-aeon/) | [Hexagon](/companies/hexagon/) | legs and wheels | not given | 4 h | not given | enterprise only | partial |
| [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) | [Apptronik](/companies/apptronik/) | biped | 73 kg | 4 h | not given | not for sale | partial |
| [HMND 01](/robots/humanoid-hmnd-01/) | [Humanoid](/companies/humanoid/) | biped | 70 kg | 4 h | not given | enterprise only | partial |
| [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) | [1X](/companies/1x/) | biped | 30 kg | 4 h | not given | preorder, $20,000 | yes |
| [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) | [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) | biped | 35 kg | 2 h | 0.75 kWh | in stock, $13,500 | partial |
| [Fourier GR-2](/robots/fourier-gr-2/) | [Fourier](/companies/fourier/) | biped | 63 kg | 2 h | not given | enterprise only, $125,000 | partial |
| [Fourier N1](/robots/fourier-n1/) | [Fourier](/companies/fourier/) | biped | 38 kg | 2 h | not given | in stock, $40,000 | partial |
| [LimX TRON 1](/robots/limx-tron-1/) | [LimX Dynamics](/companies/limx-dynamics/) | biped, legs only | 20 kg | 2 h | not given | in stock, $15,000 | partial |
| [Xpeng PX5](/robots/xpeng-px5/) | [Xpeng](/companies/xpeng/) | biped | not given | 2 h | not given | not for sale | unknown |
| [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) | [Honda](/companies/honda/) | biped | 48 kg | 1 h | not given | discontinued | partial |
| [FEDOR](/robots/fedor-skybot-f-850/) | [Android Technics](/companies/android-technics/) | biped | 160 kg | 1 h | not given | not for sale | yes |
| [Sony QRIO](/robots/sony-qrio/) | [Sony](/companies/sony/) | biped | 7.3 kg | 1 h | not given | discontinued | no |
| [Optimus Gen 1](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-1/) | [Tesla](/companies/tesla/) | biped | 73 kg | not given | 2.3 kWh | not for sale | partial |
| [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) | [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) | biped | 47 kg | not given | 0.864 kWh | enterprise only | partial |

Three records claim 1 hour, five claim 2, four claim 4, four claim 5, three claim 6 and three claim 8. The 1-hour machines are ASIMO from 2000, QRIO from 2002 and FEDOR from 2016, all retired. The 2-hour machines are all from 2023 to 2025, and three of the five are in stock. The bottom of the current market has moved from one hour to two.

Form matters more than year. The 17 bipeds have a median of 4 hours. The 5 wheeled machines have a median of 6, and two of the three 8-hour claims are on wheels: REEM, a 100 kg machine from 2010 that is no longer made, and the Pudu D7. The only walking robot that claims a full 8 hours is the [Kepler K2 Bumblebee](/robots/kepler-k2-bumblebee/), and its own record calls it a claim.

## What the kilowatt-hours say

Seven records give a pack size. Five of them, every full-size body in the set, sit within 0.08 kWh of each other: 2.25, 2.25, 2.3, 2.3 and 2.33 kWh, for machines of 60 to 85 kg. That convergence lets us do arithmetic the makers do not.

| Machine | Battery | Quoted runtime | Hours per kWh | Implied average draw | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Kepler K2 Bumblebee](/robots/kepler-k2-bumblebee/) | 2.33 kWh | 8 h | 3.43 | 291 W | 85 kg |
| [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) | 0.75 kWh | 2 h | 2.67 | 375 W | 35 kg |
| [Figure 01](/robots/figure-01/) | 2.25 kWh | 5 h | 2.22 | 450 W | 60 kg |
| [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) | 2.25 kWh | 5 h | 2.22 | 450 W | 70 kg |
| [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) | 2.3 kWh | 5 h | 2.17 | 460 W | 60 kg |

[Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) has quoted 5 hours across three generations and the arithmetic is steady: about 450 W on average from a 2.25 to 2.3 kWh pack. Kepler puts a pack of the same size in a body 15 kg heavier than Figure 02 and quotes 8 hours, which needs 291 W. Either the K2 uses a third less energy than Figure's machine while carrying more, or the two companies are measuring different things, such as standing versus working. Neither says. The G1's 0.75 kWh for 2 hours implies 375 W for a 35 kg machine, and our verdict on it notes two hours in practice, the only figure here that did not come from a maker.

[Tesla](/companies/tesla/)'s 2.3 kWh for Optimus Gen 1 came from its 2022 specification and has no hours next to it. [Xpeng Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) announces a solid-state battery for a version planned for mass production in late 2026, with no capacity and no runtime.

## Of the 44 you can order, 4 tell you

We covered the price bands in [how much a humanoid costs](/blog/how-much-does-a-humanoid-robot-cost/). Here is what the same bands know about their batteries.

| Price band | Orderable machines | Quote a runtime | Quote a battery | What is said |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $1,000 | 7 | 0 | 0 | [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/): $299 tethered, $449 with a battery, no capacity |
| $1,000 to $10,000 | 7 | 0 | 0 | Nothing |
| $10,000 to $50,000 | 11 | 4 | 1 | G1 2 h and 0.75 kWh; TRON 1 2 h; N1 2 h; NEO 4 h |
| $50,000 and up | 2 | 0 | 0 | Nothing |
| No public price | 17 | 0 | 0 | Nothing |

Fourteen machines under $10,000 and not one runtime between them. The [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/) [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/) is the only record in the band that mentions a battery, as the $150 difference between the tethered Lite and the wireless version. Everything with a runtime sits between $13,500 and $40,000, and three of those four say 2 hours. The longest quoted runtime on anything you can order is [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) at 4 hours, and NEO is the machine whose Expert Mode is a person driving it remotely. Above $50,000, and across the 17 orderable machines with no public price, nobody says.

## What an eight-hour shift means against these numbers

Against the median of 4 hours, a shift is two full charges. Against the orderable machines, a shift is four charges of a G1, N1 or TRON 1, or two of a NEO. Only 3 of 182 records claim a single charge covers a shift, one of them walks, and none of the three can be ordered.

The second half of the sum is missing. No record gives a charge time. The closest is [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/), which lists wireless charging at 2 kW; at that rate its 2.3 kWh pack refills in a little over an hour, if the rate holds all the way, which Figure does not say. So a 2-hour biped on an 8-hour shift is four charges of unknown length, or several robots taking turns, or a swap.

Our [52 deployment rows](/blog/where-humanoids-actually-work-52-deployments/) do not help. Two of them use the word battery. One is Optimus sorting cells for Tesla. The other is [Walker S2](/robots/ubtech-walker-s2/) swapping its own. Not one records hours worked per charge, uptime, or how many packs a site keeps.

## The swap: what has been seen, and what has only been said

Four records say the pack can be swapped. [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) from [Apptronik](/companies/apptronik/) quotes a 4-hour swappable battery and is piloted by Mercedes-Benz, GXO and Jabil, with partial teleoperation. [Hexagon](/companies/hexagon/)'s [AEON](/robots/hexagon-aeon/) has hot-swappable batteries, about 4 hours, on legs with wheels. [Fourier GR-2](/robots/fourier-gr-2/) doubled the capacity of GR-1, made the pack swappable, and still quotes about 2 hours. And [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/)'s [Walker S2](/robots/ubtech-walker-s2/), unveiled in July 2025, is the first humanoid to exchange its own battery, in about 3 minutes, on video.

Two of these have been observed outside a launch video. Walker S2 has been in factories named by UBTech, including BYD, Foxconn, Dongfeng Liuzhou and Zeekr, since October 2025, with battery swapping listed in the task; our record marks the autonomy as mixed and the delivered count as pending verification. UBTech publishes neither the pack size nor the hours between swaps, so "round-the-clock" is a claim about the swap, not about the battery.

The other observation is a race. On 19 April 2025, 21 humanoid teams ran a 21 km half marathon in Beijing's Yizhuang district. [X-Humanoid](/companies/x-humanoid/)'s [Tiangong Ultra](/robots/tiangong-ultra/) won in 2 hours 40 minutes, with a human pacer alongside and batteries swapped during the race. Six of 21 finished; several fell or overheated. It is the most public endurance test in our data, and the winner needed fresh packs to cover 21 km in under three hours.

None of this is new. [Honda P2](/robots/honda-p2/) carried its own batteries and computers in December 1996 and weighed 210 kg. Atlas went untethered in 2015. Thirty years on, the question has moved from whether the robot can carry its battery to whether the battery can carry a shift, and the makers answer it 22 times out of 182.

## What to ask about the battery

Four questions, and how many of 182 records answer each.

Is the pack swappable, and can the robot keep running while it happens? Four records say swappable (Apollo, GR-2, AEON, Walker S2). One says hot-swappable (AEON). One swaps by itself (Walker S2). The other 178 do not say.

How long does a full charge take, at what power? Zero records give a time. One gives a charger rating (Figure 03, 2 kW).

How many cycles is the pack rated for, and what does the warranty cover? Zero records give a cycle count. Of 42 buy records, one lists a warranty at all: NEO, three years on the Early Access purchase, with no separate battery term.

How long does it run doing the job you are buying it for, not standing still? 22 quote a figure. None says what the robot was doing when it was measured.

If you are choosing a machine for a shift, take the quoted hours, halve them for work rather than standing, and assume you will measure the charge time yourself. Then count the shift in packs and robots, not in hours. The only maker that has put a full working day on record did it with a 3-minute swap, and even that record does not say how long the pack lasts between swaps.

## Sources
- Unitree G1 product page, https://www.unitree.com/g1 (Unitree)
- Introducing Figure 03, https://www.figure.ai/news/introducing-figure-03 (Figure AI)
- Kepler Robotics official site, https://www.gotokepler.com/ (Kepler)
- UBTech Walker S2 page, https://www.ubtrobot.com/ (UBTech)
- X-Humanoid official site, https://www.x-humanoid.com/ (X-Humanoid)
- Apollo, https://apptronik.com/apollo (Apptronik)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X)
- Fourier GR-2 page, https://www.fftai.com/products-gr2 (Fourier)

================================================================
# Humanoid races, games and fights: what the competitions proved
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/humanoid-races-games-and-fights-what-the-competitions-proved/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Explainer | 1869 words

> Our record holds 11 competition events from 1997 to 2025 and 17 machines tied to them. Six can be ordered, three at a public price, and 13 of the 17 carry a teleoperation flag of yes or partial.

Humanoid competitions have produced three kinds of result: a supervised machine finishing a fixed course, an autonomous machine kicking a ball, and a remote-controlled machine hitting another one. Our events file holds 11 competition records from 1997 to 2025, and 17 robots in the database are tied to one of them. Six can be ordered. The winners of the two biggest prizes are not for sale, and 13 of the 17 are flagged as teleoperated in full or in part.

## The DARPA Robotics Challenge tested work, with a human on the radio

The one competition built around work was the DARPA Robotics Challenge, announced on 10 April 2012 after Fukushima, with a $2 million prize for robots that could work in disaster environments built for people. DARPA funded the hydraulic [Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-hydraulic/) as a platform for software teams; [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) supplied seven copies in 2013.

At the trials in Homestead on 20 December 2013, sixteen teams faced eight disaster-response tasks. [SCHAFT S-One](/robots/schaft-s-one/) from [SCHAFT](/companies/schaft/) scored 27 of 32 points and won, ahead of [IHMC](/companies/ihmc/) on an Atlas. At the finals in Pomona on 6 June 2015, [KAIST](/companies/kaist/)'s [DRC-HUBO+](/robots/drc-hubo/) completed all eight tasks in 44 minutes 28 seconds and took the $2 million.

The DRC-HUBO+ record says "supervised teleoperation under DRC rules". The SCHAFT record says "operated with human supervision as allowed by the DRC rules". [THORMANG3](/robots/thormang3/) from [Robotis](/companies/robotis/) is flagged teleoperation yes, "used with operator interfaces". DRC entrants [Valkyrie](/robots/nasa-valkyrie/) from [NASA](/companies/nasa/) and [WALK-MAN](/robots/iit-walk-man/) from [IIT](/companies/iit/) are flagged yes too. The hydraulic Atlas is the only DRC machine flagged no, and that flag describes its backflip and parkour videos, not its DRC runs under the same supervised rules.

What the DRC proved: with an operator watching, a humanoid could finish a known set of tasks on a known course in under an hour. What it did not produce: a product. Of the six DRC machines in our data, none is for sale and none has a deployment record.

## RoboCup is the one competition where autonomy is the rule

RoboCup started in Nagoya in August 1997 with about 40 teams and a stated goal of beating the human World Cup champions by 2050. The Humanoid League followed in Fukuoka in June 2002 with walking, penalty kicks and free style events. In August 2007 RoboCup chose the 58 cm [NAO](/robots/aldebaran-nao/) from [Aldebaran](/companies/aldebaran/) as the Standard Platform League robot, and NAO became the most widely sold humanoid on record, over 13,000 units.

RoboCup machines are the ones in our data that say autonomous and mean it. [NimbRo-OP2X](/robots/nimbro-op2x/) from the [University of Bonn](/companies/university-of-bonn/) won adult-size titles playing fully autonomous soccer and is flagged teleoperation no. [ROBOTIS OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/) and its predecessor [DARwIn-OP](/robots/darwin-op/) play autonomous kid-size soccer, both flagged no. [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/) from [Booster Robotics](/companies/booster-robotics/) became the kid-size standard platform in 2025 and its record says "autonomous soccer at RoboCup 2025", although the machine as sold is flagged partial.

The same Bonn team won the ANA Avatar XPRIZE on 5 November 2022, a $5 million prize for a telepresence avatar. That competition was teleoperation by design: the people who win the autonomous league also won the prize for putting a human in the loop well.

What RoboCup proves: on-board perception and decision-making work at small scale, on a flat field, with a ball. NAO is 5.5 kg. It says nothing about lifting a tote.

## The 2025 season: a half marathon, a boxing ring and a stadium

Three of the 11 competition records fall in 2025, all in China.

On 19 April 2025, 21 humanoid teams ran 21.1 km alongside human runners in Beijing's Yizhuang district. [Tiangong Ultra](/robots/tiangong-ultra/) from [X-Humanoid](/companies/x-humanoid/) finished first in 2 hours 40 minutes 42 seconds, an average of 2.19 m/s or 7.9 km/h. Its record notes a human pacer alongside and batteries swapped during the race; the event record says most teams had handlers. Six of 21 robots completed the course. Several fell or overheated. [Noetix N2](/robots/noetix-n2/) from [Noetix](/companies/noetix/) came second and [Leju Kuavo](/robots/leju-kuavo/) from [Leju](/companies/leju/) finished.

On 25 May 2025 in Hangzhou, four [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) robots boxed in the CMG World Robot Competition Mecha Fighting Series on state television. The event record is explicit: four teleoperated G1s, and it calls the series marketing for Chinese humanoids. The G1's own record lists boxing among its autonomy evidence. Both lines stay because that is what the sources say; read the first.

From 14 August 2025, around 280 teams from 16 countries competed at the first World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing: athletics, football, dance and applied tasks such as medicine sorting and hotel cleaning. [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) robots won most track events, including a 1500 m in 6 minutes 34 seconds, an average of 3.81 m/s. The record does not say which model ran it; the [H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) claims 3.3 m/s as a walking record. Tiangong Ultra took track wins too. The event record states no control mode and notes frequent falls. For the applied tasks, the ones that resemble work, our record has no winner and no control mode.

| Date | Event | Task | Winner, per record | Control mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 1997 | First RoboCup, Nagoya | Robot soccer, about 40 teams | Not recorded | Autonomous play |
| June 2002 | RoboCup Humanoid League, Fukuoka | Walking, penalty kicks, free style | Not recorded | Autonomous play |
| August 2007 | RoboCup Standard Platform League | Platform choice, not a contest | NAO selected | Autonomous play |
| 10 April 2012 | DRC announced | Eight disaster tasks, $2 million | Not applicable | Supervised teleoperation allowed |
| 20 December 2013 | DRC Trials, Homestead | Eight tasks, 16 teams | SCHAFT S-One, 27 of 32 points | Supervised teleoperation |
| June 2015 | DRC Finals, Team ROBOTIS entry | THORMANG3 platform | Not applicable | Operator interfaces |
| 6 June 2015 | DRC Finals, Pomona | Eight tasks in one run | DRC-HUBO+, 44 min 28 s | Supervised teleoperation |
| 5 November 2022 | ANA Avatar XPRIZE, Long Beach | Telepresence avatar, $5 million | NimbRo, University of Bonn | Teleoperation by design |
| 19 April 2025 | Beijing half marathon | 21.1 km, 21 teams, 6 finished | Tiangong Ultra, 2:40:42 | Handlers, pacer, battery swaps |
| 25 May 2025 | Hangzhou boxing, Mecha Fighting Series | Boxing, four G1 | Not recorded | Teleoperated |
| 14 August 2025 | World Humanoid Robot Games, Beijing | Athletics, football, dance, applied tasks | Unitree, most track events | Not stated; H1 and G1 flagged partial |

A race is a controlled course with a known surface and a support crew. A fight, where the record says so, is a remote-control event. Neither is a workplace.

## The gala and the Tianjin lunge are the same machine

Two more records belong here, though neither is a competition. On 28 January 2025, sixteen [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) robots danced a folk routine with human dancers on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Our deployment record files it under entertainment, customer China Media Group, 16 units, autonomy "autonomous", ended the same day. For a rehearsed dance, autonomous means a fixed routine run without a controller; the H1 record says its manipulation demos are "mostly scripted or teleoperated" and flags the machine partial. It is the only H1 deployment on file.

Twelve days later, on 9 February 2025, an H1 performing at a lantern festival in Tianjin stumbled and jerked toward the crowd barrier before handlers pulled it back. Organisers said a program failure was the cause. Nobody was hurt. It is the only incident record in the file and the reference case for humanoids in crowds. The machine that made [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) a household name and the machine that lunged were the same model, in the same fortnight.

## Who competes, and what it costs

Of the 17 machines tied to a competition, 6 are orderable, 3 of those at a public price. Ten are flagged partial, 3 yes and 4 no. The four flagged no are three small RoboCup soccer robots and a retired hydraulic Atlas.

| Machine | Competition in record | Availability | Price | Teleoperation flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) | Hangzhou boxing; Games | In stock, backordered | $13,500 to $73,900 | partial |
| [Noetix N2](/robots/noetix-n2/) | Half marathon, second place | In stock | $5,500 | partial |
| [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/) | RoboCup 2025 platform | In stock via distributors | $29,800 | partial |
| [Tiangong 1.0](/robots/tiangong/) | Half marathon, base platform | In stock | No public price | partial |
| [Leju Kuavo](/robots/leju-kuavo/) | Half marathon finisher | In stock | No public price | partial |
| [ROBOTIS OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/) | RoboCup kid size | In stock | No public price | no |
| [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) | Games; gala; Tianjin | Enterprise only | $90,000, by quote | partial |
| [NAO](/robots/aldebaran-nao/) | RoboCup SPL since 2008 | Enterprise only | By quote | partial |
| [Tiangong Ultra](/robots/tiangong-ultra/) | Half marathon winner; Games | Not for sale | None | partial |
| [NimbRo-OP2X](/robots/nimbro-op2x/) | RoboCup adult size titles | Not for sale | None | no |
| [DARwIn-OP](/robots/darwin-op/) | RoboCup kid size | Discontinued | $12,000 at launch | no |
| [DRC-HUBO+](/robots/drc-hubo/) | DRC Finals winner | Not for sale | None | partial |
| [SCHAFT S-One](/robots/schaft-s-one/) | DRC Trials winner | Not for sale | None | partial |
| [Atlas (hydraulic)](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-hydraulic/) | DRC 2013 to 2015 | Not for sale | None | no |
| [THORMANG3](/robots/thormang3/) | DRC Finals | Discontinued | Not public | yes |
| [Valkyrie](/robots/nasa-valkyrie/) | DRC Trials 2013 | Not for sale | None | yes |
| [WALK-MAN](/robots/iit-walk-man/) | DRC Finals 2015 | Not for sale | None | yes |

The winners are not the products. Tiangong Ultra is a 180 cm, 52 kg competition version, not for sale; what you can buy is the 163 cm, 43 kg [Tiangong 1.0](/robots/tiangong/), with no public price. The G1s in the ring were on controllers and the ones at the Games were fielded by teams; the $13,500 G1 standard in the [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) store is closed to your code, and the open EDU version starts at $43,900 (see [the G1 configuration ladder](/blog/unitree-g1-cheap-one-cannot-run-your-code/)). The H1 that danced is a sales conversation at $90,000. The DRC machines are in labs and museums.

Deployments say the same. Among the 17, the G1 has two (research labs worldwide, and a China Mobile tender with no unit count), Leju Kuavo one unclear pilot at BAIC, NAO education and research, the H1 the gala. The other 13 have none. Nothing in [the 52 deployments on record](/blog/where-humanoids-actually-work-52-deployments/) cites a competition as the reason anyone bought.

## What a buyer should take from a result, and what to ignore

Take the finishing rate. Six of 21 in the half marathon is the honest number, and it tells you about heat and batteries on a two-hour task. The G1 record lists two hours of runtime; the marathon winner needed swaps. If your shift is eight hours, start there.

Take the falls. Every 2025 record mentions them, and a machine that gets up after a fall in a stadium has a balance controller that works. It is the one thing the fights show too.

Take the control mode as written. Supervised teleoperation at the DRC, handlers and a pacer at the marathon, remote control in the ring. Where the record is silent, as it is for the Games' applied tasks, assume nothing.

Ignore a win by a model you cannot buy. Ignore a dance. Ignore a boxing match as evidence of anything except shove recovery and a broadcast contract. Ignore "wins most track events" until you know which configuration ran and whether it is the one on the order form.

Check that the competition task is your task. The only competition on record that tried real work, the DRC, was won with an operator on the line and ended with no product. The fully autonomous ones were played by 58 cm robots with a ball. Nothing in the 11 records shows a humanoid completing a work task, unsupervised, on a course it had not seen. If a seller shows you a medal, ask for the deployment instead.

## Sources
- DARPA Robotics Challenge, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge (Wikipedia)
- World Humanoid Robot Games, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Humanoid_Robot_Games (Wikipedia)
- Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, https://www.x-humanoid.com/ (X-Humanoid)
- Unitree, https://www.unitree.com/ (Unitree)
- Unitree G1 in the Unitree store, https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-g1 (Unitree)
- RoboCup Federation, https://www.robocup.org/ (RoboCup)
- ANA Avatar XPRIZE, https://www.xprize.org/prizes/avatar (XPRIZE)
- Noetix Robotics, https://www.noetixrobotics.com/ (Noetix)

================================================================
# Japan built the first humanoids, then stopped shipping them
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/japan-built-the-first-humanoids-and-then-stopped/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: History | 1617 words

> Japan has 24 humanoids and 12 makers in our record, more than any country except China and the United States. Two of the 24 can be ordered today, and both were first shown in 2009.

Japan has 24 humanoid robots in our record, built by 12 makers. Only China, with 65, and the United States, with 44, have more. Two of Japan's 24 can be ordered today, and both were first shown in 2009. Since 2020 Japanese makers have revealed two machines. Chinese makers have revealed 59, and 27 of those have an order button. The country that built the first full-scale humanoid in 1973 has, on the evidence in our files, left the market it opened.

## Fifty years of Japanese humanoids in one table

We took the 24 Japanese records, sorted them by first reveal, and counted status and availability on 4 September 2026.

| Era | Machines | Status today | Orderable now | Names |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 to 1999 | 5 | 5 retired | 0 | WABOT-1, WABOT-2, Honda E series, P2, P3 |
| 2000 to 2009 | 10 | 6 retired, 2 discontinued, 2 commercial | 2 | ASIMO, QRIO, HRP-2, EMIEW, Kiyomori, WABIAN-2R, HRP-3, NEXTAGE, KHR-3HV, HRP-4C |
| 2010 to 2019 | 7 | 3 retired, 1 discontinued, 2 research, 1 prototype | 0 | HRP-4, S-One, Pepper, Kaleido, T-HR3, CUE, HRP-5P |
| 2020 to 2026 | 2 | 1 research, 1 prototype | 0 | Kawasaki Friends, Punyo |

Fourteen of the 24 are retired and 3 are discontinued: 17 machines that no longer exist as programmes. Twelve of the 24 carry the category "historic". Fifteen of the 24 were first shown by 2009. The busiest decade was the 2000s, with 10 reveals. The 2020s so far have 2.

## The line from WABOT-1 to ASIMO

[WABOT-1](/robots/wabot-1/) was completed in 1973 by Ichiro Kato's group at [Waseda University](/companies/waseda/). It walked at about 45 seconds a step, grasped objects and held a conversation in Japanese; our record calls it the first full-scale anthropomorphic robot. [WABOT-2](/robots/wabot-2/) followed in 1984, read sheet music with a camera and played an electronic organ with hands and feet at the Tsukuba Expo in 1985. Neither used teleoperation. Both were built once.

[Honda](/companies/honda/) picked up the thread in secret. The [E series](/robots/honda-e-series/), seven pairs of legs built between 1986 and 1993, went from one step every five seconds to stairs and slopes. On 20 December 1996 Honda showed [P2](/robots/honda-p2/), 182 cm and 210 kg, the first biped with all batteries, computers and motors on board. [P3](/robots/honda-p3/) came in September 1997 at 160 cm and 130 kg. [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) was unveiled on 31 October 2000. The 2005 version ran at 6 km/h and worked as a receptionist at Honda's Tokyo headquarters. The 2011 version ran at 9 km/h, poured drinks and picked its own path through a crowd. Our record marks its teleoperation as partial, and the price as never: ASIMO was not sold, and rentals to companies were reported at about $150,000 a year in the 2000s.

On 28 June 2018 Nikkei reported that Honda had disbanded the ASIMO development team to focus on practical robotics such as mobility aids. The daily shows at Miraikan in Tokyo ended on 31 March 2022. The name survives as ASIMO OS, Honda's vehicle software. Thirty-two years of work, from E0 in 1986 to the 2018 decision, produced no humanoid a customer could buy.

## The national programme and the entertainment robots

In 1998 the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry funded the five-year Humanoid Robotics Project, run by [AIST](/companies/aist/) with Kawada Industries and Honda. HRP-1 was a modified P3. [HRP-2](/robots/hrp-2/), completed in 2003, became the workhorse: about 16 units went to Japanese and French labs at several hundred thousand dollars each, and it appears in hundreds of papers. [HRP-3](/robots/hrp-3/) added dust and splash resistance in 2007. [HRP-4C](/robots/hrp-4c/) walked a Tokyo catwalk in 2009 and cost AIST about JPY 20 million to build. [HRP-4](/robots/hrp-4/), a 39 kg research platform from 2010, was sold by [Kawada](/companies/kawada/) to universities at around JPY 26 million. [HRP-5P](/robots/hrp-5p/), shown in September 2018, picked up a gypsum board and screwed it to a wall by itself, no teleoperation, in an AIST video. It is logged as research, not for sale. The HRP line sold to labs and never to anyone else.

The corporate entertainment robots ended faster. [Sony](/companies/sony/) showed SDR-3X in November 2000, named it [QRIO](/robots/sony-qrio/) in September 2003 and claimed the first bipedal run in 2003. QRIO was never sold. On 26 January 2006 Sony ended the QRIO and AIBO programmes in a restructuring. [Hitachi](/companies/hitachi/)'s wheeled [EMIEW](/robots/hitachi-emiew/) ran from 2005 to 2017 and guided passengers at Haneda Airport in 2016 and 2017; it is discontinued. [Tmsuk](/companies/tmsuk/)'s [Kiyomori](/robots/tmsuk-kiyomori/), a samurai-armoured biped built with Waseda in 2005, was teleoperated and built once. Waseda's own [WABIAN-2R](/robots/wabian-2r/) of 2006 was a gait study.

## What Japan actually sold

Japan's commercial humanoid record is short enough to list in full. [Kondo Kagaku](/companies/kondo/) has sold the KHR hobby kits since 2004; the [KHR-3HV](/robots/kondo-khr-3hv/) of 2009, 40 cm and 1.5 kg, is still in stock at $1,500 and runs pre-programmed motions, with teleoperation logged as yes. [Kawada](/companies/kawada/)'s [NEXTAGE](/robots/kawada-nextage/), also from 2009, is a dual-arm upper body without legs that has done assembly and kitting work at Glory Ltd since 2010; it is sold on quotation, with early reports around JPY 7.4 million, and was updated as NEXTAGE Fillie in 2022. Those two are the whole orderable list. NEXTAGE is not even in our buy table, because there is no public price to put there.

The third and largest seller is the one that stopped. [Pepper](/robots/softbank-pepper/), presented by Masayoshi Son on 5 June 2014 at 198,000 yen, went on sale to consumers in Japan on 20 June 2015 and sold its first 1,000 units in about a minute. About 27,000 were built before [SoftBank Robotics](/companies/softbank-robotics/) paused production in 2020. Pepper was designed by Aldebaran in France; SoftBank sold Aldebaran to United Robotics Group in 2022. Add HRP-2 and HRP-4 going to labs and ASIMO on rental, and that is every Japanese humanoid that ever changed hands for money in our record.

## 2013 to 2023: programmes that did not become products

[SCHAFT](/companies/schaft/), a University of Tokyo spin-out, won the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials on 20 December 2013 with the [S-One](/robots/schaft-s-one/), scoring 27 of 32 points ahead of every American team, and was bought by Google the same month. Alphabet shut it in November 2018 after a sale to SoftBank fell through. [Toyota](/companies/toyota/)'s [T-HR3](/robots/toyota-t-hr3/), shown on 21 November 2017, is a teleoperated avatar: an operator's movements are mirrored, only the balance is autonomous, and it was demonstrated over 5G and at the Tokyo Olympics. Toyota's [CUE](/robots/toyota-cue/) shot basketballs from 2018 to 2024 and set records before winding down. [Punyo](/robots/toyota-punyo/), from December 2023, is a soft upper body at Toyota Research Institute in the United States. [Kawasaki](/companies/kawasaki/)'s [Kaleido](/robots/kawasaki-kaleido/) has been shown at the iREX trade fair since 2017 and reached its eighth version in 2023; the smaller [Friends](/robots/kawasaki-friends/) arrived in 2022. Both are prototypes, not for sale, teleoperation partial.

So the two Japanese reveals of the 2020s are a Kawasaki prototype and a research torso in a US lab. Neither has a price, a delivery date or a customer.

## Japan against China and the United States since 2020

| | Japan | China | United States |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robots in record | 24 | 65 | 44 |
| Makers in record | 12 | 30 | 33 |
| Robots first revealed 2020 or later | 2 | 59 | 32 |
| Makers with a reveal since 2020 | 2 | 27 | 22 |
| Of those robots, orderable now | 0 | 27 | 5 |
| Of those robots, with a public price | 0 | 23 | 6 |
| Makers with any orderable robot | 2 | 17 | 4 |
| Most recent first reveal | December 2023 | 20 October 2025 | 9 July 2026 |
| Funding entries in record | 1 | 19 | 28 |
| Deployments in record | 4, all ended | 22 | 18 |

Chinese makers have revealed 57 humanoids since the start of 2023, from 26 companies; 24 are in stock and 3 on preorder. The [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/), shown on 13 May 2024 and in stock at $13,500, is younger than everything Japan has sold. The United States is not a shipping story either, as [China builds, America demos](/blog/china-builds-america-demos/) sets out, but it has 32 reveals this decade and 28 funding entries. Japan's one funding entry is not a humanoid round at all: SoftBank's $5,375,000,000 purchase of ABB's robotics division on 8 October 2025, industrial arms. Of the 52 deployments in our record, 4 involve a Japanese humanoid, 3 of them Pepper and 1 ASIMO at Honda's own headquarters and Miraikan. All 4 have ended.

## What the record cannot explain

The data says when programmes stopped, and in three cases it carries the stated reason: Sony's 2006 restructuring, Honda's 2018 turn to mobility aids, and Alphabet closing SCHAFT when the SoftBank sale collapsed. Pepper's pause in 2020 has no reason logged. There is no field for why, and we will not invent one. The files cannot say whether Honda or Toyota run humanoid work they have not shown, whether Japanese factories are buying Chinese machines instead, or whether Kawasaki's stated aims for Kaleido, disaster response and nursing, will produce an order form. What the files do show is that 11 of the 12 Japanese makers are still active companies, and that only 5 of them, AIST, Kawada, Kawasaki, Kondo and Toyota, have a humanoid whose status is not retired or discontinued.

If you want a humanoid from Japan today, the options are a $1,500 hobby kit that is 40 cm tall and a legless factory arm sold on quotation. There is no full-size Japanese biped you can order, and no Japanese machine with a public price above $1,500. Anyone treating Japan's 24 records as a supplier list, or its heritage as a pipeline, should read the status column instead: 17 of 24 are over. The one programme still iterating in Japan with a stated job is Kaleido, and it is on its eighth prototype with no price. Buy from where the order buttons are, and count Japan's humanoids as history until a Japanese maker publishes a price and a delivery date.

## Sources
- WABOT, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WABOT (Wikipedia)
- Robot Development History, https://global.honda/innovation/robotics/robot-development-history.html (Honda)
- ASIMO, https://global.honda/innovation/robotics/ASIMO.html (Honda)
- HRP-2, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HRP-2 (Wikipedia)
- AIST HRP-5P press release, https://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/list/latest_research/2018/20181116/en20181116.html (AIST)
- Pepper (robot), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_(robot) (Wikipedia)
- T-HR3, https://global.toyota/en/detail/19666346 (Toyota)
- KHR-3HV, https://kondo-robot.com/product/03068 (Kondo Kagaku)

================================================================
# Open-source humanoids: what you can actually build
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/open-source-humanoids-what-you-can-actually-build/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Explainer | 2085 words

> 24 of the 182 humanoids on record call themselves open source. 15 publish hardware files and software, 3 name a licence, 12 can be ordered, and none of the four on preorder has any autonomy evidence yet.

"Open source" on a humanoid spec sheet covers everything from a full set of CAD files, a bill of materials and training code, to a software kit for a body you are not allowed to open. Our database flags 24 of 182 robots as open source. Per each record's note on what is released: 15 publish hardware files and software. 3 publish software or documentation and sell the hardware as a kit. 1 releases an "open-source edition" of a product that stays proprietary. 5 say they are open and give no detail.

## What "open" means on each record

The 15 with both are the ones a lab can reproduce. [Berkeley Humanoid Lite](/robots/berkeley-humanoid-lite/) from [UC Berkeley](/companies/uc-berkeley/) put hardware, firmware, simulation and training code on GitHub in April 2025, with 3D printed cycloidal gearboxes and a bill of materials under $5,000. [ToddlerBot](/robots/toddlerbot/) from [Stanford](/companies/stanford-university/) released hardware, firmware and learning code in February 2025 for a 56 cm, 3.4 kg, 30-DOF machine at about $6,000 in parts. [Fourier N1](/robots/fourier-n1/) published CAD, a bill of materials and software under an open licence in April 2025. [iCub](/robots/iit-icub/) from [IIT](/companies/iit/) has had open designs and software since 2008.

The 3 software-and-kit records are [BRUCE](/robots/bruce/) from [UCLA](/companies/ucla/), open control software with the hardware sold as a kit by Westwood Robotics at an unpublished price, and two [Robotis](/companies/robotis/) machines, [ROBOTIS OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/) and the discontinued [THORMANG3](/robots/thormang3/), which publish software and documentation rather than drawings. Their ancestor [DARwIn-OP](/robots/darwin-op/) released drawings, electronics and code in December 2010.

[Leju Kuavo](/robots/leju-kuavo/) is the one-off: an open-source edition of Kuavo 4.0 came out in December 2024 and the full product is proprietary. The 5 with no detail are [HopeJR](/robots/hugging-face-hopejr/), [Z-Bot](/robots/k-scale-z-bot/), [Tiangong 2.0](/robots/tiangong-2/), [Roboy](/robots/devanthro-roboy/) and [Qinglong](/robots/qinglong/), whose note says only that it was released under the OpenLoong program. [Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/) has no note on the robot record; its price record says fully open-source hardware and software.

Only 3 of the 24 name a licence. iCub says GPL and similar. [InMoov](/robots/inmoov/) releases its files under a Creative Commons non-commercial licence, which matters if you planned to sell what you print. [Poppy Humanoid](/robots/poppy-humanoid/) from [Inria](/companies/inria/) uses Creative Commons and GPL. The other 21 say "open licences" or nothing: find the licence file before you build.

## The 24, in one table

Height, weight and joint count come from the records where they exist: 12 give a height, 10 a weight and 14 a DOF figure. A bill of materials is marked as such.

| Machine | Maker | Open per the record | cm / kg / DOF | Price in data | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Lingxi X1](/robots/agibot-lingxi-x1/) | AgiBot | Structural design and software framework on GitHub | 130 / 33 / 29 | No fixed price | In stock |
| [Fourier N1](/robots/fourier-n1/) | Fourier | CAD, BOM and software, open licence | 130 / 38 / 23 | $40,000 via distributor | In stock |
| [Kuavo](/robots/leju-kuavo/) | Leju | Open-source edition of Kuavo 4.0; product proprietary | n.a. | No verified price | In stock |
| [Qinglong](/robots/qinglong/) | Humanoid Robots (Shanghai) | OpenLoong program, no detail | 185 / 80 / 43 | None | In stock |
| [Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/) | Pollen Robotics | Hardware and software, per price record | Wheeled base, n.a. | $70,000 to $75,000; $38,000 one arm | Built to order |
| [ROBOTIS OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/) | Robotis | Software and hardware documentation | 51 / 3.5 / 20 | Low five figures, ask Robotis | In stock |
| [Tiangong 1.0](/robots/tiangong/) | X-Humanoid | Design and software, Tiangong Open Source | 163 / 43 / n.a. | None | In stock |
| [Tiangong 2.0](/robots/tiangong-2/) | X-Humanoid | No detail | n.a. | None | In stock |
| [HopeJR](/robots/hugging-face-hopejr/) | Hugging Face | No detail; sold as an arms-and-hands kit | n.a. / n.a. / 66 | $3,000 target | Preorder |
| [K-Bot](/robots/k-scale-k-bot/) | K-Scale Labs | Hardware, firmware and software, open licences | n.a. | Developer pricing, unverified | Preorder |
| [Z-Bot](/robots/k-scale-z-bot/) | K-Scale Labs | No detail | n.a. | $999 | Preorder |
| [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/) | Pollen Robotics | Hardware and software | 28 / n.a. / n.a. | $299 Lite, $449 wireless | Preorder |
| [BRUCE](/robots/bruce/) | UCLA | Software; hardware as a kit from Westwood Robotics | n.a. / n.a. / 16 | Kit price not public | Enterprise only |
| [iCub](/robots/iit-icub/) | IIT | Hardware designs and software, GPL and similar | 104 / 33 / 53 | Historically around EUR 250,000 | Enterprise only |
| [Berkeley Humanoid Lite](/robots/berkeley-humanoid-lite/) | UC Berkeley | Hardware and software, open licences | n.a. / n.a. / 22 | BOM under $5,000 | Not for sale |
| [HECTOR](/robots/hector/) | USC | Simulation and designs on GitHub | n.a. | None | Not for sale |
| [HumanPlus](/robots/humanplus/) | Stanford | Code and hardware modifications on a Unitree H1 | n.a. / n.a. / 33 | None | Not for sale |
| [InMoov](/robots/inmoov/) | InMoov | Files, Creative Commons non-commercial | Upper body; 5-DOF hands | Parts $1,500 to $3,000 | Not for sale |
| [NimbRo-OP2X](/robots/nimbro-op2x/) | University of Bonn | CAD and software on GitHub | 135 / n.a. / 18 | None | Not for sale |
| [Poppy Humanoid](/robots/poppy-humanoid/) | Inria | Creative Commons and GPL | 83 / 3.5 / 25 | Kits were several thousand euros | Not for sale |
| [Roboy](/robots/devanthro-roboy/) | Devanthro | No detail | n.a. | None | Not for sale |
| [ToddlerBot](/robots/toddlerbot/) | Stanford | Hardware, firmware and learning code on GitHub | 56 / 3.4 / 30 | BOM about $6,000 | Not for sale |
| [DARwIn-OP](/robots/darwin-op/) | Robotis | Mechanical drawings, electronics and code | 45.5 / 2.9 / 20 | About $12,000 at launch | Discontinued |
| [THORMANG3](/robots/thormang3/) | Robotis | Software and documentation | 137 / 42 / 29 | Not public | Discontinued |

## Half of them come from universities

11 of the 24 come from a university or research institute: Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Stanford twice, Bonn, IIT, Inria, and the Chinese state innovation centres in Shanghai and Beijing behind Qinglong, [Tiangong 1.0](/robots/tiangong/) and Tiangong 2.0. The other 13 come from companies: three from Robotis, two each from [K-Scale Labs](/companies/k-scale-labs/) and [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/), one each from [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/), [Fourier](/companies/fourier/), [Hugging Face](/companies/hugging-face/), [Leju](/companies/leju/) and [Devanthro](/companies/devanthro/), plus InMoov, one sculptor and the people who print his files.

Five are 3D printed by design: Berkeley Humanoid Lite, ToddlerBot, InMoov, Poppy and [NimbRo-OP2X](/robots/nimbro-op2x/), the 135 cm RoboCup machine from the [University of Bonn](/companies/university-of-bonn/). Here "open" means you can make one. InMoov's record says thousands of builders have downloaded the files since 2012 and puts the parts at roughly $1,500 to $3,000, for a life-size upper body with 5-DOF tendon hands on hobby servos and Arduino boards. Poppy's kits were once sold by Generation Robots for several thousand euros; it walks with light assistance. The two 2025 machines have learned locomotion: the Berkeley Lite paper shows walking and a whole-body policy, the ToddlerBot paper walking, push-ups and manipulation trained from teleoperated demonstrations.

Two machines people assume are open are not, per the record. The original [Berkeley Humanoid](/robots/berkeley-humanoid/) of July 2024, 85 cm and 16 kg at a reported build cost under $10,000, published design details in its paper and left the open release to the Lite. The [MIT Humanoid](/robots/mit-humanoid/) has no open-source flag at all: a research prototype, not for sale.

## What you can order, and what it has proved

12 of the 24 can be ordered: 8 in stock and 4 on preorder. That is 12 of the 44 orderable humanoids in the database, about a quarter by count. Only 5 of the 12 have a verified price record: [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/) at $299 tethered or $449 wireless, Z-Bot at $999, HopeJR at $3,000, Fourier N1 at $40,000 through the distributor Robotopian, and Reachy 2 at $70,000 to $75,000 built to order, or $38,000 for a stationary one-arm version. The four Chinese platforms in stock, [Lingxi X1](/robots/agibot-lingxi-x1/), Qinglong, Tiangong 1.0 and Tiangong 2.0, have no public price; neither does Kuavo. [K-Bot](/robots/k-scale-k-bot/) is on preorder with developer pricing we could not verify.

Now look at what those 12 have proved. 6 have something in the autonomy evidence field: Lingxi X1 with walking demos and university use, N1 with over 1,000 hours of outdoor walking claimed by Fourier, Kuavo finishing the Beijing half marathon in April 2025, Qinglong with walking, stair and manipulation demos at WAIC, OP3 playing autonomous RoboCup soccer, and Tiangong running at 6 km/h at launch. Five of those six are marked partial teleoperation; OP3 is marked no. The other 6 have nothing there, including all 4 on preorder. Reachy 2 is built for VR teleoperation: teleoperation yes, autonomy evidence empty. HopeJR is built for leader-follower teleoperation with exoskeleton arms and gloves; our price record calls it arms and hands sold as a kit, not a finished robot. Reachy Mini is a 28 cm head and torso with no arms.

Two of the 12 appear in our deployment records, both marked unclear: Kuavo's factory training work with BAIC, and Tiangong pilots in Beijing with no named commercial deployment verified. The third open machine with a deployment record is iCub: more than 30 copies in laboratories in Europe, the US and Asia according to IIT, enterprise only, historically around EUR 250,000.

## Open SDK, closed body

Ten more records describe a different kind of open: software you can call, on hardware you cannot change. 8 carry a note saying so and 2 mention an SDK in the software field. This is where most of the research fleet lives.

| Machine | cm / kg / DOF | What is open | Price in data | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) | 132 / 35 / 23 | SDK, URDF models and RL environments; hardware is not | $13,500 standard, closed to your code; $43,900 EDU with SDK | In stock, backordered |
| [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) | 180 / 47 / 19 | SDK and RL training code | From $90,000, sales conversation | Enterprise only |
| [Unitree H1-2](/robots/unitree-h1-2/) | 180 / 70 / 27 | Same SDK family as H1 and G1 | Quote only | Enterprise only |
| [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/) | 118 / 30 / 23 | SDK open; hardware proprietary | $29,800 basic, $50,925 with grippers | In stock via distributors |
| [EngineAI PM01](/robots/engineai-pm01/) | 138 / 40 / 24 | Open interfaces and SDK; hardware proprietary | $13,700 | In stock, Chinese marketplaces |
| [LimX TRON 1](/robots/limx-tron-1/) | 85 / 20 / n.a. | Open SDK, RL examples | $15,000 reported | In stock |
| [Rainbow RB-Y1](/robots/rainbow-rb-y1/) | n.a. / n.a. / 24 | SDK is open source | No public price | In stock |
| [IHMC Nadia](/robots/ihmc-nadia/) | n.a. | IHMC control software is open | Research platform | Not for sale |
| [HRP-2](/robots/hrp-2/) | 154 / 58 / 30 | OpenHRP control software was open | Several hundred thousand dollars, historical | Discontinued |

The [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) is the case that matters, and we have written it up in [Unitree G1: why the cheap one cannot run your code](/blog/unitree-g1-cheap-one-cannot-run-your-code/). The short version: the SDK, URDF and RL environments are open, the $13,500 machine will not run your code, and the EDU that will starts at $43,900. The [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/) from [Booster Robotics](/companies/booster-robotics/) is the same deal at $29,800: open SDK, proprietary body, autonomous soccer at RoboCup 2025. You get a body that walks on day one and a user base that has already hit the bugs. You do not get the drawings, and when an actuator dies you buy the maker's.

The comparison inside the data is direct. Fourier N1 at $40,000 gives you the CAD, the BOM and the training code for a 130 cm, 38 kg, 23-DOF body. The G1 EDU at $43,900 gives you the SDK, the hands and the Jetson for a 132 cm, 35 kg, 23-DOF body you cannot modify. Same size and price, opposite ideas of what you are paying for. [HumanPlus](/robots/humanplus/) shows the third way: Stanford took a closed [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/), added hands, released the code and the modifications, and trained shoe-wearing and folding from shadowed demonstrations. Open research on a closed base is how most papers get written.

## Build, kit or SDK

Build from files if you have a printer, a small workshop and time, and your goal is to understand the machine or change it. Berkeley Humanoid Lite, under $5,000 in parts with a paper behind it, is the benchmark; ToddlerBot at about $6,000 adds manipulation and a teleoperation pipeline; InMoov at $1,500 to $3,000 is an upper body for a school or a maker, on a non-commercial licence. All three are not for sale, because you are the factory.

Buy a kit if you want open hardware without the printing. Reachy Mini at $299 is a head on a desk and the cheapest door into the Hugging Face stack. Z-Bot at $999 and HopeJR at $3,000 are preorders from companies that publish their designs and have shown no autonomous work. OP3 is the proven one: 51 cm, 3.5 kg, 20 DOF, a ROS-based open framework, in stock at a price you ask for. Reachy 2 at $70,000 is the only full open stack sold assembled, and it rolls rather than walks.

Buy closed hardware with an SDK if what you need is a body that already walks and a fleet of other users: the G1 EDU at $43,900, the T1 at $29,800, the PM01 at $13,700 or the TRON 1 at $15,000. Then read the licence on that SDK too, and count the repair path: an open machine you fix with a printer, a closed one with a purchase order. Decide which you are set up for before you decide on the robot.

## Sources
- Berkeley Humanoid Lite, https://lite.berkeley-humanoid.org/ (UC Berkeley)
- ToddlerBot, https://toddlerbot.github.io/ (Stanford University)
- InMoov, https://inmoov.fr/ (InMoov)
- Poppy Humanoid, https://www.poppy-project.org/en/robots/poppy-humanoid/ (Poppy Project)
- ROBOTIS OP, https://emanual.robotis.com/docs/en/platform/op3/introduction/ (Robotis)
- Fourier N1 open source page, https://www.fftai.com/products-n1 (Fourier)
- Reachy 2, the open-source humanoid for embodied AI, https://pollen-robotics.com/reachy-2/ (Pollen Robotics)
- Unitree G1 product page, https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-g1 (Unitree)

================================================================
# Startups, automakers, universities: who builds humanoids
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/startups-automakers-universities-who-builds-humanoids/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Explainer | 1763 words

> 108 makers, nine kinds. Startups hold 37 of the 44 humanoids you can order. Automakers, universities, big tech, conglomerates and NASA hold 45 robots between them and sell none of them.

Our database lists 108 makers behind 182 humanoid robots, sorted into nine types. Startups are 60 of the 108 and account for 116 robots and 37 of the 44 you can order. The other eight types, 48 makers, account for 66 robots and 7 orderable ones. Five of those types sell nothing at all.

## Nine kinds of maker, four of which sell anything

Orderable means in stock or preorder, the homepage rule. The last column counts makers with at least one orderable machine.

| Maker type | Makers | Robots | Orderable | Enterprise only | Retired or discontinued | Research | Makers that sell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Startup | 60 | 116 | 37 | 36 | 23 | 2 | 22 |
| University | 12 | 17 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 10 | 0 |
| Big tech | 8 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Conglomerate | 7 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Research institute | 7 | 16 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 2 |
| Automaker | 6 | 15 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 0 |
| Ecosystem | 5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Supplier | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Government | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |

The selling column is short: startups, the two kit suppliers ([Hiwonder](/companies/hiwonder/) and [Robosen](/companies/robosen/)), two Chinese research institutes, and [Hugging Face](/companies/hugging-face/) with the $3,000 [HopeJR](/robots/hugging-face-hopejr/) on preorder. Everyone else, 34 makers with 45 robots, has no order form: 31 percent of the makers, 0 percent of the market.

Two fields are thin. Headcount, `employees_est`, is empty for all 108 makers, and total funding is filled in once, [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) at $1.75 billion. So this compares what makers build and sell, not how big they are. 20 makers have a stock ticker ([the listed makers](/blog/humanoid-robot-stocks-which-makers-are-listed/)); only 4 sell an orderable humanoid, all typed as startups: [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/), [Robotis](/companies/robotis/), [Rainbow Robotics](/companies/rainbow-robotics/), [Dobot](/companies/dobot/). The 16 listed automakers, conglomerates and big tech firms have nothing you can order.

## The startup wave peaked in 2023

59 of the 60 startups carry a founding year. 9 were founded before 2010, 8 between 2010 and 2014, 16 between 2015 and 2019, 3 in 2020 and 2021, then 23 from 2022 onward: 5 in 2022, 10 in 2023, 7 in 2024, 1 in 2025. The median founding year is 2018. 2023 is the biggest single year on the record.

The 23 post-2022 startups are 12 Chinese, 8 American, and one each from Britain, Israel and Vietnam. They account for 41 robots, 19 of them orderable. The 36 older startups account for 74 robots, 18 orderable. The young companies put a higher share of what they build on sale. Ten of the 23 sell today, 8 Chinese ([AgiBot](/companies/agibot/), founded February 2023, is the largest with 6 robots) and 2 American, K-Scale Labs and Weave Robotics. Figure AI, the best funded, sells nothing.

Startup is a loose word in our schema: an independent company whose main business is robots, whatever its age. [Kondo Kagaku](/companies/kondo/) dates from 1980, [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) from 1992, Robotis from 1999. Ownership is not the type either. Boston Dynamics has belonged to Hyundai since 2021, Rainbow Robotics became a Samsung subsidiary in December 2024, and [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/) went to Hugging Face in April 2025. The type follows the maker, not the parent.

Startups also carry the dead machines. 23 of their 116 robots are retired or discontinued: [Figure 01](/robots/figure-01/), the first [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/), the [hydraulic Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-hydraulic/), [Kepler K1](/robots/kepler-k1/), UBTech's first [Walker](/robots/ubtech-walker/). Five of the 60 companies are no longer what they were: [Aldebaran](/companies/aldebaran/) and Pollen acquired, [Anybots](/companies/anybots/) and [DataA](/companies/dataa-robotics/) dormant, [Schaft](/companies/schaft/) defunct. 32 startups have one robot on record. 14 have three or more.

## Automakers build for themselves

Six automakers hold 15 robots. None is orderable. 8 are retired or discontinued, 2 are research, and [Chery Mornine](/robots/chery-mornine/) is enterprise only, with a reported $42,200 price from a marketplace listing.

[Honda](/companies/honda/) ran the most influential corporate program of the 1990s and 2000s, from the E series through P2 and [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/), then ended ASIMO development in 2018. All four Honda machines are retired. [Toyota](/companies/toyota/) has three, retired or research; [T-HR3](/robots/toyota-t-hr3/) is teleoperated. [Tesla](/companies/tesla/) has four generations of Optimus: two retired, [Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) in pilot with teleoperation marked yes, [V3](/robots/tesla-optimus-v3/) a prototype. [Xpeng](/companies/xpeng/)'s [Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) and [GAC](/companies/gac/)'s [GoMate](/robots/gac-gomate/) are prototypes.

The deployments say the same thing. Of 52 on record, 4 belong to automakers: two Tesla sites, Xpeng internal, Honda internal. Every one is the maker using its own robot at its own factory, office or diner. No automaker has put a humanoid at a customer. A car company builds a humanoid like a concept car: for its own line, at a target cost, not a list price. [Tesla Optimus: what the record shows](/blog/tesla-optimus-what-the-record-shows/) has the detail.

## Universities, big tech and conglomerates: bodies without a shop

Twelve universities hold 17 robots, 10 research and 7 retired. Nine of the twelve are American. Nothing is for sale, but two publish the number a startup will not: the bill of materials. Stanford's [ToddlerBot](/robots/toddlerbot/) is about $6,000 in parts, Berkeley's [Humanoid Lite](/robots/berkeley-humanoid-lite/) under $5,000. You build it yourself; the design is the product.

Big tech is 8 makers and 4 robots. [Google DeepMind](/companies/google-deepmind/), [Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/), [OpenAI](/companies/openai/) and [Samsung](/companies/samsung/) have no body of their own on record; they supply models, chips, capital or ownership to companies that do. The 4 bodies: [Xiaomi CyberOne](/robots/xiaomi-cyberone/), research, cited at CNY 600,000 to 700,000 per unit, no product; [Naver AMBIDEX](/robots/naver-ambidex/), research; [Robbyant R1](/robots/robbyant-r1/) from Ant Group, prototype; Sony's [QRIO](/robots/sony-qrio/), cancelled in 2006.

Conglomerates are 7 makers and 7 robots, and [Foxconn](/companies/foxconn/) has none. This type holds the two most famous endings in the record: Westinghouse's [Elektro](/robots/elektro/) from 1939 and SoftBank's [Pepper](/robots/softbank-pepper/), production paused in 2020, all three deployments on record ended. The live one is [Hexagon](/companies/hexagon/)'s [AEON](/robots/hexagon-aeon/), unveiled June 2025, in pilot, enterprise only, teleoperation partial. NASA, the one government maker, holds [Robonaut 2](/robots/nasa-robonaut-2/) (retired) and [Valkyrie](/robots/nasa-valkyrie/) (research).

## The research institutes that sell are Chinese

Seven research institutes hold 16 robots, the only non-startup type with something in stock. The 3 orderable machines are [Tiangong 1.0](/robots/tiangong/) and [Tiangong 2.0](/robots/tiangong-2/) from [X-Humanoid](/companies/x-humanoid/), the Beijing municipal innovation center backed by UBTech, Xiaomi and Beijing E-Town, and [Qinglong](/robots/qinglong/) from the [Shanghai national center](/companies/humanoid-robots-shanghai/). Both platforms are open source. None has a public price, and all three are marked teleoperation partial.

The Western institutes do not sell. [AIST](/companies/aist/) built five HRP machines with Kawada; four are retired and [HRP-5P](/robots/hrp-5p/) is research. [IIT](/companies/iit/)'s [iCub](/robots/iit-icub/) is enterprise only, built at cost for research partners, historically around EUR 250,000. DLR, Inria and IHMC hold research robots. A state-backed institute in China behaves like a startup with a public shareholder; one in Europe or Japan behaves like a university.

## The long tail: 17 countries, 45 makers, 8 orderable

China and the United States hold 63 of the 108 makers and 36 of the 44 orderable machines; that split is in [China builds, America demos](/blog/china-builds-america-demos/). The other 17 countries hold 45 makers, 73 robots and 8 orderable machines. Of those 73 robots, 28 are retired or discontinued, 17 enterprise only and 13 research.

| Country | Makers | Robots | Orderable | A maker to know |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 30 | 65 | 31 | [Unitree](/companies/unitree/), [G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) at $13,500 |
| United States | 33 | 44 | 5 | [1X](/companies/1x/), [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) at $20,000 |
| Japan | 12 | 24 | 2 | [Kondo Kagaku](/companies/kondo/), [KHR-3HV](/robots/kondo-khr-3hv/) kit at $1,500 |
| France | 6 | 8 | 2 | [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/), [Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/) at $70,000, [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/) at $299 |
| Germany | 5 | 7 | 0 | [Neura Robotics](/companies/neura-robotics/), [4NE-1](/robots/neura-4ne-1/), enterprise only |
| South Korea | 5 | 9 | 3 | [Robotis](/companies/robotis/), [OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/) in stock |
| Britain | 3 | 3 | 0 | [Engineered Arts](/companies/engineered-arts/), [Ameca](/robots/engineered-arts-ameca/), enterprise only |
| Italy | 2 | 4 | 0 | [IIT](/companies/iit/), [iCub](/robots/iit-icub/) |
| Russia | 2 | 2 | 0 | [Android Technics](/companies/android-technics/), [FEDOR](/robots/fedor-skybot-f-850/), retired |
| Spain | 1 | 6 | 0 | [PAL Robotics](/companies/pal-robotics/), [REEM-C](/robots/pal-reem-c/) and [TALOS](/robots/pal-talos/), enterprise only |
| Canada | 1 | 1 | 0 | [Sanctuary AI](/companies/sanctuary-ai/), [Phoenix](/robots/sanctuary-phoenix/), pilot |
| Hong Kong | 1 | 2 | 0 | [Hanson Robotics](/companies/hanson-robotics/), [Sophia](/robots/sophia/), enterprise only |
| India | 1 | 1 | 0 | [Addverb](/companies/addverb/), [Heal](/robots/addverb-heal/), concept |
| Israel | 1 | 1 | 0 | [Mentee Robotics](/companies/mentee-robotics/), [Menteebot](/robots/mentee-menteebot/), pilot |
| Poland | 1 | 2 | 1 | [Clone Robotics](/companies/clone-robotics/), [Clone Alpha](/robots/clone-alpha/), preorder, no price |
| Sweden | 1 | 1 | 0 | [Hexagon](/companies/hexagon/), [AEON](/robots/hexagon-aeon/), pilot |
| Taiwan | 1 | 0 | 0 | [Foxconn](/companies/foxconn/), no robot of its own on record |
| Turkey | 1 | 1 | 0 | [Akinrobotics](/companies/akinrobotics/), [ADA GH5](/robots/akinrobotics-ada-gh5/), enterprise only |
| Vietnam | 1 | 1 | 0 | [VinMotion](/companies/vinmotion/), founded January 2025, prototype |

Japan is the long tail's biggest case and its clearest warning: 12 makers, 24 robots, 17 of them retired or discontinued. Its two orderable machines are a hobby kit from Kondo, founded 1980, and [Kawada](/companies/kawada/)'s [NEXTAGE](/robots/kawada-nextage/), a dual-arm industrial machine sold on quotation. Japan built the field's history and sells almost none of its present. Korea is the opposite: 5 makers, 3 orderable machines, from two listed companies, Robotis with [OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/) and the $539 [MINI](/robots/robotis-mini/), and Rainbow Robotics with [RB-Y1](/robots/rainbow-rb-y1/). Europe west of Russia holds 19 makers in 7 countries and puts 3 machines on sale, 2 of them Pollen's.

Only 3 of the 26 startups outside China and the United States were founded in 2022 or later: Humanoid in Britain, Mentee in Israel, VinMotion in Vietnam. The wave is a two-country wave.

## What the maker type tells a buyer

The type predicts three things before you open a spec sheet.

Price basis. Of the 42 records in our buy file, 8 rest on an official published price: 6 startups, Hugging Face and Hiwonder. The other 30 startup records are reported prices (23), quotes (6) or an estimate (1), and 8 route through a sales contact. Kit suppliers go the other way: Robosen's [K1 Pro](/robots/robosen-k1-pro/) at $299 and Hiwonder's [TonyPi Pro](/robots/hiwonder-tonypi-pro/) at $789 sit in an official store, price on the page. An automaker or a big tech firm gives you a cost target, a CNY range, or nothing.

Support. One buy record in 42 carries a warranty, [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/)'s three years on the Early Access purchase. The rest say nothing; the type does not help. A university publishes drawings and a parts list, more than most startups offer for a machine you own.

Longevity. Corporate programs end by decision: Sony in 2006, Honda in 2018, SoftBank in 2020. Startups end by being bought or running out: 5 of 60 so far, and 23 of their 116 machines are already off the list. The safest bet on that measure is not a type but a habit. Kondo has sold kits since 2004, Robotis productised [DARwIn-OP](/robots/darwin-op/) and is on its third generation, [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/)'s [Alpha](/robots/ubtech-alpha/) line still sells at $499 while its first Walker is retired. The makers whose old products stayed for sale are the ones to buy from now.

If you are choosing a supplier, buy from a startup or a kit maker with an official price on its own store; nobody else has one. If you are choosing what to wait for, note that the deepest pockets, the automakers and big tech, hold 19 robots and zero order forms, and their four deployments are all at home.

## Sources
- AgiBot, https://www.agibot.com (AgiBot)
- Kondo Kagaku, https://kondo-robot.com (Kondo Kagaku)
- Robotis e-Manual, https://emanual.robotis.com/ (Robotis)
- X-Humanoid, https://www.x-humanoid.com (X-Humanoid)
- Hugging Face, https://huggingface.co/ (Hugging Face)
- Honda robot development history, https://global.honda/innovation/robotics/robot-development-history.html (Honda)
- PAL Robotics, https://pal-robotics.com/ (PAL Robotics)
- Hexagon Robotics, https://hexagon.com/company/divisions/robotics (Hexagon)

================================================================
# Who is paying for humanoids: 69 funding rounds
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/who-is-paying-for-humanoids-69-funding-rounds/
Published: 2026-09-06 | Section: Explainer | 1762 words

> Our funding record holds 69 entries. Take out the government funds, the acquisitions and the IPOs and $6.33 billion of disclosed private money remains. 37 percent of it went to companies with no robot on record.

Add up every amount in our funding record and you get $166.2 billion. That number is useless. $153.2 billion of it is three Chinese government funds, most of it one national fund-of-funds pledged over twenty years. Take those out, along with the acquisitions and the IPOs, and the private money that went into humanoid makers and their model suppliers is $6.33 billion across 35 disclosed rounds. Ten rounds are 70 percent of that.

## How $166 billion becomes $6.3 billion

The record has 69 entries. 42 carry an amount. Seven of the 42 distort the sum and we set them aside.

The largest is the National Development and Reform Commission's venture guidance fund of 6 March 2025, expected to mobilise about CNY 1 trillion, roughly $138 billion, over twenty years, naming embodied AI among several priorities. It invests in funds, not in humanoids. Beijing's CNY 100 billion fund (about $13.8 billion) covers robotics, AI and information industries together; Shenzhen's CNY 10 billion (about $1.38 billion) is an AI and robotics fund plus subsidies; Shanghai's entry has no size. Those four entries take $153.18 billion with them.

Seven entries are acquisitions, three with a price: [SoftBank](/companies/softbank-robotics/)'s $5.375 billion for ABB's robotics division in October 2025 (industrial arms, listed because the buyer also leads Skild AI), Hyundai's $880 million for 80 percent of [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) in 2020, and [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/)'s $293 million for 63.6 percent of the listed Swancor in July 2025, money leaving a maker to buy a listing. That is $6.548 billion out. [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/)'s Hong Kong listing of 29 December 2023 raised about $130 million; listings have [their own article](/blog/humanoid-robot-stocks-which-makers-are-listed/), so it goes too.

What remains is 56 entries, 35 with an amount, totalling $6,329,300,000, Sanctuary AI's $22 million Canadian grant included because it went straight to a company.

## 2025 was the year the money arrived

Of the 69 entries, 41 are dated 2025, 16 are 2024 and 6 are 2023. Before that: two in 2022, two in 2020, one in 2017, one in 2013, all Agility, Sanctuary or Boston Dynamics.

In the private set, 2025 has 32 entries, 18 of them with an amount, together $3.82 billion. 2024 has 16 entries, 9 disclosed, $2.11 billion. 2023 has five disclosed rounds worth $172.5 million and 2022 two worth $208.5 million. Roughly 94 percent of the disclosed private money landed in 2024 and 2025.

21 of the 56 private entries carry no amount, 14 of them from 2025. Five carry a valuation but no amount: [1X](/companies/1x/) at a reported $10 billion, [Skild AI](/companies/skild-ai/) at a reported $4 billion, AgiBot at $2.1 billion and earlier $980 million, [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) at about $1.7 billion. A valuation without an amount is a press number. It says what somebody agreed to call the company, not what it received.

The disclosed 2025 money is concentrated. Figure's $1 billion is 26 percent of the year. Add Physical Intelligence, Field AI, Agility and Apptronik and five rounds are 72 percent of it.

## The ten largest rounds

| # | Company | Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Lead investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) | 16 September 2025 | Series C | $1,000M | $39B post-money | Parkway Venture Capital |
| 2 | [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) | 29 February 2024 | Series B | $675M | $2.6B post-money | none named |
| 3 | [Physical Intelligence](/companies/physical-intelligence/) | November 2025 | Series B | $600M | $5.6B post-money | CapitalG |
| 4 | Field AI | August 2025 | Series A and B | $405M | $2B post-money | Bezos Expeditions, Prysm Capital, Temasek |
| 5 | [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) | April 2025 | Series C | $400M | $1.75B pre-money, reported | WP Global Partners |
| 6 | [Physical Intelligence](/companies/physical-intelligence/) | 4 November 2024 | Series A | $400M | $2.4B post-money | Jeff Bezos, Thrive Capital, Lux Capital |
| 7 | [Apptronik](/companies/apptronik/) | 13 February 2025 | Series A | $350M | not disclosed | B Capital, Capital Factory |
| 8 | [Skild AI](/companies/skild-ai/) | 9 July 2024 | Series A | $300M | $1.5B post-money | Lightspeed, Coatue, SoftBank Group, Bezos Expeditions |
| 9 | [Rainbow Robotics](/companies/rainbow-robotics/) | 31 December 2024 | strategic | $180M | not disclosed | Samsung Electronics |
| 10 | [Galbot](/companies/galbot/) | June 2025 | Series A++ | $153M | not disclosed | CATL, Puquan Capital |

These ten sum to $4.46 billion, 70.5 percent of the private total. The median disclosed private round is $105 million.

Figure's Series C is the one everybody quotes. Figure said the round was over $1 billion; Reuters put the post-money valuation at $39 billion, fifteen times the Series B a year and a half earlier. Across four rounds in our record Figure has raised $1.754 billion.

Apptronik's $350 million Series A of 13 February 2025 was the largest humanoid round of early 2025, led by B Capital and Capital Factory with Google participating. A $53 million extension in June took it to $403 million, to scale [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) production with Jabil.

Four of the ten rounds, $1.705 billion, went to companies that build models rather than bodies: Physical Intelligence twice, Field AI and Skild AI. Just below the table, [The Bot Company](/companies/the-bot-company/) has $300 million at a reported $4 billion valuation and no product shown.

## Who shows up most often

The 56 entries with an investor list name 144 distinct investors once obvious variants are merged (Nvidia and NVentures, three labels for Jeff Bezos, three Meituan vehicles). 111 appear exactly once.

| Investor | Entries | Led | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/) | 6 | 1 | Figure (2024, 2025), Physical Intelligence, Field AI, Skild AI, plus the Foxconn plant partnership |
| Jeff Bezos / Bezos Expeditions | 5 | 3 | Physical Intelligence (2024, 2025), Field AI, Skild AI, Figure |
| Khosla Ventures | 5 | 1 | Physical Intelligence (three rounds), Field AI, Genesis AI |
| SoftBank Group | 5 | 4 | Skild AI (2024, 2025), Boston Dynamics (bought 2017, sold 2020), ABB robotics |
| Beijing Robot Industry Fund | 4 | 0 | Unitree, Galbot (2024, 2025), RobotEra |
| Intel Capital | 4 | 1 | Figure (2023, 2024, 2025), Field AI |
| Lux Capital | 4 | 2 | Physical Intelligence (three rounds), Dyna Robotics |
| Meituan | 4 | 2 | Unitree (2024, 2025), Galbot (2024, 2025) |
| OpenAI / OpenAI Startup Fund | 4 | 1 | 1X (2023), Figure (2024), Physical Intelligence (2024, twice) |
| Sequoia Capital | 4 | 0 | Physical Intelligence (three rounds), Skild AI |

Nvidia is in four of the ten largest rounds. Bezos is in five. The American names in this table back, between them, Figure, 1X, Physical Intelligence, Field AI, Skild AI, Genesis AI and Dyna Robotics; five of those seven have no robot in our database and sell models to the makers that do.

The Chinese side clusters in Unitree, Galbot, LimX and EngineAI, and mostly does not disclose. Of the private money to companies with a country on record, $4.52 billion across 17 rounds is American and $598 million across six rounds is Chinese. Unitree's Series C, led by China Mobile, Tencent, Alibaba and Geely, surfaced through registry changes with no amount. Part of why [China builds and America demos](/blog/china-builds-america-demos/) is a reporting artefact.

## Money raised against machines you can buy

The 69 entries name 42 recipients; four are governments, leaving 38 companies. Eleven of the 38 have no robot in our database: Physical Intelligence, Skild AI, Field AI, The Bot Company, Dyna Robotics, Genesis AI and five smaller names. Eight of the eleven have a disclosed amount, together $2.37 billion, 37.5 percent of the private total.

Twelve of the 38 have a machine with a buy record that is not marked "not for sale": Unitree, 1X, AgiBot, RobotEra, Hugging Face, Agility, EngineAI, Fourier, Booster, LimX, UBTech and K-Scale. [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/), [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) and the [electric Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/) have buy entries marked not for sale. By the site's stricter test, in stock or preorder as in [the 44](/blog/44-you-can-order-138-you-cannot/), 15 of the 38 have an orderable machine and 23 have none.

Split the money that way. $1.04 billion across nine disclosed rounds went to makers with a buy record: Unitree, 1X, [Fourier](/companies/fourier/), Agility, [RobotEra](/companies/robotera/) and [EngineAI](/companies/engineai/). $5.29 billion across 26 rounds went to companies you cannot buy from. That is 84 percent.

Deployments are wider: 17 of the 38 have at least one entry in our [52 deployments](/blog/where-humanoids-actually-work-52-deployments/), 21 have none. Of the ten largest raisers by total, six have none.

## Units delivered: the field is empty

Our robots table has a field called `units_deployed_est`. It is null on all 182 machines. The deployments table is only a little better: 6 of 52 entries give a unit count, and they sum to 41 robots.

Twenty of the 41 are [Walker S](/robots/ubtech-walker-s/) units in an order Dongfeng Liuzhou announced in February 2024, status pilot. Sixteen are [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/)s that danced at the CCTV gala on 28 January 2025, for one night. Two are the first production [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/)s Ford took in 2020, since retired. The last three are an Optimus at the Tesla Diner, [Phoenix](/robots/sanctuary-phoenix/) doing a week at Mark's under teleoperation, and Robonaut 2.

Set that against the money. The five largest raisers, Figure, Physical Intelligence, Agility, Field AI and Apptronik, took $4.2 billion, two thirds of the private total. Their counted units in this record: two, Ford's Digits. UBTech and Unitree own 36 of the 41 counted units and have $270 million of disclosed money between them, UBTech's $130 million listing and Unitree's $140 million Series B.

Figure is the sharpest case. $1.754 billion raised, three deployments, no unit count in any of them. [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) loaded sheet metal at BMW Spartanburg from August 2024 to November 2025, autonomous according to Figure, fleet size not published. A logistics pilot has no named customer; the home alpha does not say how many homes. Figure 03 is not for sale, and BotQ is designed for 12,000 units a year. Apollo has three pilots, at Mercedes-Benz, GXO and Jabil, none with a number, and its teleoperation field says partial.

## What to read in a maker's funding record

A round is a bet by people who expect a return, and this record shows the bets bunching around the same names. Read it for five things. Whether there is an amount, or only a valuation; five entries here have the second without the first. Who led, and whether they have led before: Parkway has led Figure three times, Thrive and Lux have backed Physical Intelligence three times, and CapitalG, Samsung or CATL leading is a strategic buyer choosing a supplier. Whether the recipient builds bodies at all; $2.37 billion here went to model companies, and a model does not arrive on a pallet. Whether the maker has a buy record and a deployment with a unit number. And for Chinese makers, whether anything is disclosed; if not, count named customers, as UBTech's list of BYD, Foxconn, Zeekr and Dongfeng lets you do.

If you are choosing a maker for a pilot, weight a $100 million round less than one named customer with a published fleet size. This record has six deployments with a count. The five biggest raisers own one of them, and it is two robots from 2020 that have since been retired.

## Sources
- Figure AI valued at $39 billion in latest funding round, https://www.reuters.com/business/figure-ai-valued-39-billion-latest-funding-round-2025-09-16/ (Reuters)
- Robotics startup Figure raises $675 mln from Microsoft, Nvidia, other big techs, https://www.reuters.com/technology/robotics-startup-figure-raises-675-mln-microsoft-nvidia-other-big-techs-2024-02-29/ (Reuters)
- Apptronik newsroom, https://apptronik.com/news (Apptronik)
- Physical Intelligence, https://www.physicalintelligence.company (Physical Intelligence)
- Agility Robotics newsroom, https://www.agilityrobotics.com/newsroom (Agility Robotics)
- Skild AI, https://www.skild.ai (Skild AI)
- Unitree news, https://www.unitree.com/news (Unitree)
- UBTech Robotics, https://www.ubtrobot.com (UBTech)

================================================================
# 44 you can order, 138 you cannot: the gap explained
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/44-you-can-order-138-you-cannot/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: News | 1092 words

> We keep a record of 182 humanoid robots. Fewer than a quarter of them will sell you one, and of those, only eight tell you the price on their own website. Here is where the rest went.

The most common question we get is some version of "which of these can I actually buy?" The honest answer is short, and the reasons behind it are the more interesting story. Here is the record of 182 machines, sorted by whether money can change hands.

## The five piles

| Availability | Machines | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Not for sale | 78 | Research platforms, prototypes and concepts. Many are real and walking. None has an order form. |
| Enterprise only | 40 | You can get one if you are a factory, a hospital chain or a logistics operator with a procurement team. There is no price, there is a sales call. |
| In stock | 34 | Orderable now, from a store page, a distributor or a marketplace. |
| Preorder | 10 | A price and an order button, and a delivery date that has not arrived yet. |
| Discontinued | 20 | Was for sale once. Includes some of the most famous names in the history of the field. |

In stock plus preorder is 44. That is the number on our homepage, and it is the whole buyable market as of 4 September 2026.

Sort the other 138 by status instead of availability and the shape is clearer. 48 are retired or discontinued: 33 retired, 15 discontinued. 25 are research platforms and 25 are prototypes, plus one concept. That leaves 39 machines that are, by their makers' account, in pilot (13), limited production (13) or commercial use (13) and still cannot be ordered by you; 33 of them sit in the enterprise-only pile, which breaks down as 13 commercial, 12 limited production, 8 pilot, 3 prototype, 3 research and 1 retired.

## Who is selling, and what

| Country | On record | Orderable | In stock | Preorder |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 65 | 31 | 28 | 3 |
| United States | 44 | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| Japan | 24 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| South Korea | 9 | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| France | 8 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Poland | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 |

Of the 44, **31 come from Chinese makers**. The United States has 44 machines on record, as many as the whole buyable market, and not one is in stock; its five orderable humanoids are all preorders. Of the other 39 American machines, 28 are not for sale, 5 are enterprise only, 6 are discontinued. China's 34 unsold machines split the other way: 18 enterprise only, 14 not for sale, 2 discontinued. Japan built 24 humanoids and sells 2. The United States builds humanoids and, with a few exceptions, does not sell them to you. China does both.

The category field says what the 44 are for. 19 are research platforms, out of 69 in that category. 11 are education machines, out of 14, the only category where most of the record is for sale. All 4 platforms, meaning bodies sold for you to build on, are orderable. Then it thins out: 4 of 26 general-purpose machines, 3 of 6 home machines, 2 of 18 industrial, 1 of 20 service. None of the 19 historic, 4 entertainment or 2 logistics machines can be ordered. The humanoid you can buy is, overwhelmingly, a research or teaching body.

## What they cost, and how we know

Our buy records cover 42 machines and hold 35 prices, from **$299** to **$250,000** with a median of $15,000. But 8 of those 35 prices belong to enterprise-only machines, and the $250,000 at the top is our own estimate for [Agility's Digit](/robots/agility-digit/), a retired version whose successor is rented, not sold. Restrict the count to the 44 orderable machines: 28 have a buy record, 27 have a price, and the range is $299 to $70,000 with a median of $7,999. Seven are under $1,000. Fourteen are under $10,000. Two are $50,000 or more. Sixteen orderable machines, from [AgiBot Genie G1](/robots/agibot-genie-g1/) to [Tiangong 2.0](/robots/tiangong-2/), have no price we can point at.

Now the uncomfortable part. Of the 27 prices among the 44, only **8 are official**, meaning they appear on the maker's own page. **19 are reported**: the number exists because a journalist or a distributor published it, not because the maker did. Across the whole buy file it is 8 official, 26 reported, 1 estimate, and 7 records that are a quote request with no number at all. Every price on this site carries this label, because a price you cannot verify at source is a rumour with a dollar sign.

Where you buy follows the same pattern. Of the 28 orderable machines with a buy record, 17 sell through the maker's own store, 7 through distributors, 3 through marketplaces, 1 through a waitlist. All 8 sales-contact records in the file belong to machines outside the 44.

## Names on both sides

On the buyable side, the [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) at $13,500 is in stock, official price, official store, often backordered; its teleoperation is partial. [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) from [1X](/companies/1x/) is $20,000 on preorder with US deliveries stated for 2026, and its teleoperation is yes. [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/) is $299 on preorder from [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/), and the [Robosen K1 Pro](/robots/robosen-k1-pro/) is $299 in stock. Both are desktop machines.

On the other side, [Tesla](/companies/tesla/)'s [Optimus V3](/robots/tesla-optimus-v3/) is a prototype with no consumer order path. [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) is in limited production at Figure's BotQ plant, used in partner deployments only; its teleoperation field reads no. [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/)' electric [Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/) is in pilot with Hyundai, teleoperation partial, with deliveries to select early adopters stated for 2027. And [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/), the most famous humanoid built, is discontinued: [Honda](/companies/honda/) ended development in 2018.

## Why the gap will not close quickly

It is tempting to read 44 out of 182 as a market about to open. Some of it will. But the 78 "not for sale" machines are mostly not products waiting for a launch date: 24 are retired and 22 are research, and research does not become a catalogue entry. The 40 enterprise-only machines may never get a public price, because their makers have decided the buyer is a fleet operator, not a person. The realistic near-term growth is in the preorder pile, the ten machines that promised a date, five of them American. Watch whether those dates hold. On this site, a delivery date that slips moves the score, and so does one that is kept.

If you are deciding whether to wait for a famous name or buy what is on the shelf: the famous names are in the 138, the shelf is 31 Chinese machines and a handful of preorders, and only eight prices can be trusted at source. We will run this count again when the record changes. The data behind every number is downloadable, under CC BY 4.0, from the data page.

## Sources
- Unitree G1 product page, https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-g1 (Unitree)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X Technologies)
- Hugging Face's open-source desktop Pollen robot starts at $299, https://www.automate.org/robotics/industry-insights/hugging-faces-open-source-desktop-pollen-robot-starts-at-299 (Association for Advancing Automation)
- Robosen K1 series programmable robots, https://us.robosen.com/collections/k1-series (Robosen)
- Tesla AI and Robotics, https://www.tesla.com/AI (Tesla)
- Introducing Figure 03, https://www.figure.ai/news/introducing-figure-03 (Figure AI)

================================================================
# A short history of the humanoid, from Elektro to the order button
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/a-short-history-of-humanoids-1939-to-2026/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: History | 907 words

> Our record holds 111 dated milestones since 1939. Sixty-eight of them are from this decade, and what changed was not the walking. It was the price tag.

Our record holds 111 dated milestones in humanoid robotics. The first is 30 April 1939. Sixty-eight of them, 61 percent, fall after 1 January 2020, and 47 fall in the 32 months since January 2024. The curve suggests the machines suddenly got good. The entries say otherwise. Walking was solved decades ago. What arrived in the 2020s was a price, a store page and a Chinese production line.

## Six eras, one table

| Era | Years | Defining machine | What it proved |
|---|---|---|---|
| The stage machine | 1939 | [Elektro](/robots/elektro/) | A humanoid draws a crowd. An operator did the rest. |
| The university biped | 1973 to 1995 | [WABOT-1](/robots/wabot-1/) | Walking, grasping, vision and speech in one body. |
| Walking solved | 1996 to 2011 | [Honda P2](/robots/honda-p2/), then [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) | A biped carries its own power and computer, then runs at 9 km/h. |
| The video decade | 2012 to 2019 | [Atlas (hydraulic)](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-hydraulic/) | Backflips and parkour. Seven copies, none sold. |
| The pivot to product | 2020 to 2023 | [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) | A full-size electric humanoid with a list price, from China. |
| The order button | 2024 to 2026 | [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) | $16,000 on a store page, then $5,900, then a $20,000 home robot on preorder. |

## 1939 to 1995: a showman and a university

[Westinghouse](/companies/westinghouse/) showed Elektro at the New York World's Fair on 30 April 1939: 2.1 metres, 120 kg, about 700 words from 78 rpm records. Its record marks teleoperation as yes; every action was an operator's spoken words counted as relay pulses.

The next milestone is 34 years later. [Waseda University](/companies/waseda/) completed [WABOT-1](/robots/wabot-1/) in 1973, counted as the first full-scale humanoid. It walked at about 45 seconds a step, grasped objects and conversed in Japanese. [WABOT-2](/robots/wabot-2/) played an organ in 1984. [Honda](/companies/honda/) built [E0](/robots/honda-e-series/) in 1986, the start of a program it kept secret for ten years. Four milestones in 22 years, all research.

## 1996 to 2019: walking is solved, then filmed

On 20 December 1996 Honda unveiled [P2](/robots/honda-p2/), the first biped to carry its own batteries and computers while it walked, climbed stairs and pushed a cart. Its record notes wireless remote control. [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) followed on 31 October 2000, ran at 6 km/h by 13 December 2005 and at 9 km/h in its 2011 version. Its shows were largely pre-programmed, with some autonomous navigation. Japan's [HRP-2](/robots/hrp-2/) (2003) went to about 16 labs at several hundred thousand dollars each. Twenty milestones in sixteen years, and not one order form. ASIMO was never sold; rentals were reported at about $150,000 a year.

The DARPA Robotics Challenge, announced 10 April 2012, made the field a spectator sport. [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) unveiled the hydraulic [Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-hydraulic/) on 11 July 2013; seven copies went to DARPA teams. [KAIST](/companies/kaist/)'s [DRC-HUBO+](/robots/drc-hubo/) won the Finals on 6 June 2015, finishing all eight tasks in 44 minutes 28 seconds under supervised teleoperation. Then the backflip on 16 November 2017, parkour in 2018, gymnastics in 2019. Atlas appears in 14 of the 111 milestones, six of them demos. Never for sale; retired 16 April 2024.

The era's one priced machine was [Pepper](/robots/softbank-pepper/), on sale in Japan from 20 June 2015, sold out in a minute, about 27,000 built before production paused in 2020. Pepper has wheels. Honda stopped ASIMO development on 28 June 2018. At the end of 2019 the record holds 43 milestones, and not one is tied to a Chinese maker.

## 2020 to 2026: the order button

[Tesla](/companies/tesla/) announced Optimus on 19 August 2021. [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) still has no price, and the units serving drinks at the We, Robot event on 10 October 2024 were confirmed as remotely assisted; its record marks teleoperation as yes.

The price came from elsewhere. [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) showed [H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) in August 2023 at about $90,000, then [G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) on 13 May 2024 at $16,000, now listed at $13,500. Both records mark teleoperation as partial: locomotion is learned, manipulation demos are mostly scripted or remote. [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/) announced mass production in August 2024 and reported its 1,000th [A2](/robots/agibot-yuanzheng-a2/) in January 2025. Unitree's [R1](/robots/unitree-r1/) arrived on 25 July 2025 at $5,900. [1X](/companies/1x/) opened preorders for [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) on 28 October 2025 at $20,000 or $499 a month, with an Expert Mode in which staff teleoperate the robot; its record marks teleoperation as yes.

The counts agree. Of the 68 milestones since 2020, 21 involve a Chinese maker, against zero before. Six of seven deployment milestones and all three regulation milestones are from this decade. Of the 44 machines you can order today, 35 were first revealed in the 2020s and 31 come from China. The four older ones are two 40 cm hobby kits, a 51 cm research platform and an upper body on a stand. No full-size legged humanoid revealed before 2020 can be ordered.

## What 87 years say about believing a demo

Every era had a convincing demonstration. Elektro's was a voice. P2's was a staircase. Atlas's was a backflip that 14 milestones and eleven years never turned into a product. The demonstrations were real, and none of them told you whether you could get one, what it cost, or who was holding the controller.

If you are deciding whether a humanoid is ready for your floor or home, skip the video and ask three questions: is there a price on the maker's own page, is there a date a unit ships, and what does the teleoperation field say. The first milestone in 87 years to carry a price in its own title is dated 13 May 2024. Treat anything that cannot answer all three as 1939 with better actuators.

## Sources
- Elektro, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektro (Wikipedia)
- WABOT, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WABOT (Wikipedia)
- Robot Development History, https://global.honda/innovation/robotics/robot-development-history.html (Honda)
- ASIMO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO (Wikipedia)
- HRP-2, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HRP-2 (Wikipedia)
- DARPA Robotics Challenge, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge (Wikipedia)
- Atlas, https://bostondynamics.com/atlas/ (Boston Dynamics)
- Pepper (robot), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_(robot) (Wikipedia)
- Optimus (robot), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_(robot) (Wikipedia)
- Unitree G1, https://www.unitree.com/g1 (Unitree)
- Unitree R1, https://www.unitree.com/R1 (Unitree)
- AgiBot, https://www.agibot.com/ (AgiBot)
- 1X NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X Technologies)

================================================================
# China builds, America demos: what 108 makers tell you
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/china-builds-america-demos/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Opinion | 951 words

> Chinese makers account for 65 of the 182 humanoids in our record and 31 of the 44 you can order. American makers hold the money, the research and most of the autonomy claims, and sell you almost nothing.

Of the 182 humanoid robots in our record, 65 come from Chinese makers and 44 from American ones. Of the 44 you can order today, 31 are Chinese and 5 are American, and all 5 American ones are preorders. On 4 September 2026 no US maker has a machine in stock. That is the shape of the market. The detail is less one-sided.

## Who builds, and who lists

The maker count is close: 33 American companies against 30 Chinese in our list of 108. But 9 of the 33 American entries are universities, [MIT](/companies/mit/) and [UC Berkeley](/companies/uc-berkeley/) among them. China's 30, 20 of them startups, put 65 machines in the record against 44.

Of the 65 Chinese machines, 48 were first shown in 2024 or later; of the American 44, 18 were. On status, 34 Chinese machines are logged as commercial. One American machine is, [Digit v4](/robots/agility-digit-v4/), and [Agility](/companies/agility-robotics/) leases it rather than selling it. Twelve American entries are retired and eleven are research platforms.

## The order button is mostly Chinese

In stock or on preorder: China 31, the United States 5. China has 28 in stock and 3 on preorder; the US has 0 in stock and 5 on preorder. Seventeen Chinese makers will take an order. Four American ones will: [K-Scale Labs](/companies/k-scale-labs/) with the [Z-Bot](/robots/k-scale-z-bot/) at $999, [Hugging Face](/companies/hugging-face/) with [HopeJR](/robots/hugging-face-hopejr/) at $3,000, [Weave Robotics](/companies/weave-robotics/) with [Isaac 1](/robots/weave-isaac-1/) at $7,999 and [1X](/companies/1x/) with [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) at $20,000. All four are logged as teleoperated or partly so. NEO's Expert Mode hands the robot to 1X staff; Weave says remote operators finish what Isaac cannot.

Nineteen of the 31 Chinese buyable machines carry a price we can point at, from $299 for the [Robosen K1 Pro](/robots/robosen-k1-pro/), a walking toy, to $63,000 for the [Robotera Q5](/robots/robotera-q5/). The median is $13,700, next to the [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) at $13,500 and the [EngineAI PM01](/robots/engineai-pm01/) at $13,700; the [Unitree R1](/robots/unitree-r1/) is $4,900. Ten Chinese buyable machines are 150 cm or taller; the two American ones, NEO and Isaac 1, are undelivered.

Two cautions on the Chinese side. Twelve of the 31 sit at a distributor with no published price, so in stock means a quote. And 40 of the 65 Chinese machines are logged as partly teleoperated, with 22 more unknown. One Chinese record says no teleoperation.

## Where the United States leads

Money. Counting disclosed rounds to makers in our record, American companies raised $5,400,500,000 across 18 rounds. Chinese makers raised $1,021,000,000 across 8, with 11 more rounds undisclosed. [Figure](/companies/figure-ai/) alone took $1,000,000,000 at a $39,000,000,000 valuation on 16 September 2025, nearly the total of all eight disclosed Chinese rounds. The largest Chinese round is [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/) at $293,000,000, for control of a listed company. The caveat: Chinese capital runs through the state. Beijing's CNY 100 billion fund, about $13,800,000,000, covers robotics, AI and information industries together, with no humanoid line item.

Deployments, with a twist. China has 22 in the record, the US 18. But 8 American deployments are logged as autonomous, against 2 Chinese: Digit at GXO's Spanx warehouse in Georgia since October 2023, [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) at Jabil, [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) at BMW Spartanburg, [electric Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/) announced for Hyundai's Georgia plant. Eighteen of the 22 Chinese deployments are logged as mixed, including the [Walker S1](/robots/ubtech-walker-s1/) and [Walker S2](/robots/ubtech-walker-s2/) line at BYD, Zeekr and Foxconn.

Research. Both research milestones logged for 2024 to 2026 are American: Figure's Helix model and [Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/)'s GR00T N1.

## What "America demos" means in the record

Of the milestones logged for 2024 to 2026, 25 involve American makers and 17 Chinese. The American ones break down into 8 general milestones, 5 reveals, 3 partnerships, 3 funding rounds and 3 demos: Figure 01 handing over an apple on 13 March 2024, [Optimus](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) pouring drinks on 10 October 2024, later confirmed as remotely operated, and Atlas sorting engine parts on 30 October 2024 without teleoperation. The Chinese entries include 8 reveals, 3 competitions, 2 deployments and 1 demo, sixteen [H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) robots dancing at the Spring Festival Gala on 28 January 2025. China reveals and races; America demos, raises and publishes. AgiBot logged its 1,000th unit off the line in January 2025. No American maker has a comparable count in the record.

| | China | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Makers in the record | 30 | 33 (9 universities) |
| Machines in the record | 65 | 44 |
| First shown 2024 or later | 48 | 18 |
| Status commercial | 34 | 1 |
| Buyable (in stock or preorder) | 31 | 5 |
| In stock today | 28 | 0 |
| Buyable with a published price | 19 | 4 |
| Buyable price range | $299 to $63,000 | $999 to $20,000 |
| Deployments in the record | 22 | 18 |
| Deployments logged autonomous | 2 | 8 |
| Disclosed funding, makers in record | $1.02 billion, 8 rounds | $5.40 billion, 18 rounds |
| Milestones 2024 to 2026 | 17 | 25 |

## If you are buying from Europe

Read the shipping line first. Of the four American preorders with a buy record, one ships outside the US: HopeJR, a pair of open-source arms you assemble. NEO, Isaac 1 and Z-Bot list US delivery only. [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/), Apollo, [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) and Atlas have no order path at all. Of the 28 Chinese buy records, 21 list global shipping, freight or a sales route abroad. The only European full-size option with a price is [Pollen's Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/) at $70,000.

So a European buying a humanoid this year is buying Chinese, and should budget for the teleoperation the record says comes with it. EU AI Act high-risk obligations are scheduled from 2 August 2026 and the Machinery Regulation from January 2027, and both apply to a humanoid sold in the EU whatever its maker's flag. If what you need is an autonomy record with a named customer, the American machines have it, and the price of that record is a sales call rather than an order.

## Sources
- Unitree G1 product page, https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-g1 (Unitree)
- UBTech official site, https://www.ubtrobot.com (UBTech)
- AgiBot official site, https://www.agibot.com (AgiBot)
- Figure AI valued at $39 billion in latest funding round, https://www.reuters.com/business/figure-ai-valued-39-billion-latest-funding-round-2025-09-16/ (Reuters)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X)
- Agility Robotics, https://www.agilityrobotics.com/ (Agility Robotics)
- EU AI Act implementation timeline, https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/implementation-timeline/ (Future of Life Institute)

================================================================
# How much does a humanoid robot cost in 2026?
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/how-much-does-a-humanoid-robot-cost/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Explainer | 910 words

> Thirty-five humanoids in our record carry a price, from $299 to $250,000 with a median of $15,000. What the money buys changes completely at each band, and so does how much you should trust the number.

A humanoid robot costs between $299 and $250,000, and the number in the middle is $15,000. That is the spread across the 35 humanoids in our record that carry a price at all. The mean is $36,688, pulled up by a few full-size industrial machines. What the money buys changes completely every time you add a zero, so this is a guide by band, not a list.

## Four bands, 35 prices

| Band | Machines | Cheapest | Price basis | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $1,000 | 7 | $299 | 3 official, 4 reported | Desktop robots, toys and classroom kits. |
| $1,000 to $10,000 | 7 | $1,400 | 2 official, 5 reported | The first machines that walk at waist height, and one wheeled home robot. |
| $10,000 to $50,000 | 13 | $13,000 | 2 official, 11 reported | Research bipeds and the first adult-size bodies. Where most of the market sits. |
| $50,000 and up | 8 | $63,000 | 1 official, 6 reported, 1 estimate | Full-size industrial and research platforms. Six of the eight are sold through a sales contact. |

Two things about the table. Only 8 of the 35 prices appear on the maker's own page; 26 are reported by a distributor or a journalist, one is our estimate, and seven more machines in the buy record have only a quote, so they have no number here. And 13 of the 35 prices are ranges. Across those 13, the top configuration costs a median 1.67 times the bottom one, and in ten cases at least 1.5 times. The Unitree G1 is the extreme at 5.47 times, from $13,500 to $73,900; we covered that ladder in [Unitree G1 at $13,500](/blog/unitree-g1-cheap-one-cannot-run-your-code/).

## Under $10,000: toys, kits and the first walkers

Below $1,000 nothing with a recorded height stands above 40 cm. [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/) from [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/), now part of [Hugging Face](/companies/hugging-face/), is $299 tethered or $449 wireless: an official price for a 28 cm head and torso that does not walk but runs the open Hugging Face robotics stack. [Robosen K1 Pro](/robots/robosen-k1-pro/) at $299 is the cheapest thing in the record that walks on two legs unaided, a 17-servo programmable toy sold as one. [Hiwonder TonyPi Pro](/robots/hiwonder-tonypi-pro/) at $789 is the classroom standard: a Raspberry Pi 5, 18 bus servos and an OpenCV vision course, priced on Hiwonder's own store.

From $1,000 to $10,000 the legs get serious. [Noetix Bumi](/robots/noetix-bumi/) at $1,400 (CNY 9,998) is a 94 cm, 12 kg walker on preorder in China, the cheapest humanoid from a serious maker. [Unitree R1](/robots/unitree-r1/) is the cheapest machine in the record that clears one metre: 121 cm, 25 kg, $4,900 for the locomotion research build and $5,900 for the standard version with manipulation, shipping now from [Unitree](/companies/unitree/). [Weave Isaac 1](/robots/weave-isaac-1/) at $7,999, or $449 a month with a $250 deposit, is the cheapest home robot with a delivery date (California, autumn 2026). It is 167 cm tall, folds laundry and resets rooms, and it is cheap because it rolls rather than walks. [Weave](/companies/weave-robotics/) says remote human operators step in for tasks it cannot finish alone.

## $10,000 to $50,000: where adult height begins

Thirteen of the 35 prices sit here, and 11 of those 13 are reported rather than official. The [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) at $13,500 is the anchor: 132 cm, the default research humanoid, with the caveat that the $13,500 version is closed to your own code. [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) from [1X](/companies/1x/) at $20,000, or $499 a month, is 165 cm and the only bipedal machine of adult height in the whole record with an official price. It relies on remote operators for what it cannot yet do on its own. The cheapest full-size biped on paper is the [EngineAI SE01](/robots/engineai-se01/) at $13,000 to $20,000, but that is a reported marketplace price for an enterprise-only machine shipping from China. The [Unitree H2](/robots/unitree-h2/) at $29,900 is listed with no buy button. At the top of the band, $44,560 buys the Lite configuration of the 169 cm [AgiBot A2](/robots/agibot-yuanzheng-a2/).

## Above $50,000: a quote, not a checkout

Eight machines, and six of them are sold through a sales conversation. [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/), the 180 cm full-size machine, is $90,000 to $150,000. [UBTech Walker S2](/robots/ubtech-walker-s2/), the 176 cm factory humanoid that swaps its own battery, is $68,000 to $120,000 to buy, but [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/) also offers it at about $5,000 a month, which is how most factories take it. [Reachy 2](/robots/pollen-reachy-2/) at $70,000 to $75,000 is the one official price in the band: a fully open-source two-armed robot on a mobile base, designed for VR teleoperation, with a stationary one-arm configuration at $38,000. The $250,000 for [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/) is the only estimate in the set, a third-party figure [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) has not confirmed. The real offer is a lease at about $8,500 a month.

## How to read a humanoid price

Three checks, in order. Read the basis label: official means the maker put it on a page, reported means someone else did, quote means a buyer passed it on. With 26 of 35 reported, most humanoid prices you will see are second-hand. Then ask which configuration. With 13 ranges and a median spread of 1.67 times, the headline figure is usually the version without hands, compute or an open SDK. Then ask what is excluded. Of 35 records, one lists a shipping cost (the G1, $300 to $1,200), one lists a warranty (NEO, three years), two take a deposit, and four offer a monthly subscription. If a price arrives without a basis, a configuration and a delivery term, you do not have a price yet. You have a number.

## Sources
- Humanoid robots for sale: 2026 guide, https://theresarobotforthat.com/blog/humanoid-robots-for-sale/ (There's A Robot For That)
- Humanoid robot prices, 2026 guide, https://robotsourced.com/pricing/humanoid-robots/ (RobotSourced)
- Unitree G1 product page, https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-g1 (Unitree)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X)
- Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot, https://thenextweb.com/news/weave-robotics-isaac-1-home-robot (The Next Web)
- Hugging Face's open-source desktop Pollen robot starts at $299, https://www.automate.org/robotics/industry-insights/hugging-faces-open-source-desktop-pollen-robot-starts-at-299 (Association for Advancing Automation)
- Reachy 2, the open-source humanoid for embodied AI, https://pollen-robotics.com/reachy-2/ (Pollen Robotics)

================================================================
# Humanoid robot stocks: which of the 108 makers are actually listed
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/humanoid-robot-stocks-which-makers-are-listed/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Explainer | 969 words

> Twenty of the 108 makers in our record have a ticker. Four of them will sell you a humanoid. The rest build cars, chips, servers and washing machines, and the pure plays are all private.

Of the 108 humanoid makers in our record, 20 have a stock ticker. Sixteen of those are car makers, conglomerates or big tech companies for which a humanoid is one programme among many. Four are robotics firms, and only those four will sell you a humanoid today. None of this is investment advice. It is a count, made from our data as of 4 September 2026.

## Twenty tickers, mostly in Hong Kong and Tokyo

The 20 split into 6 automakers, 5 conglomerates, 5 big tech companies and 4 robotics firms. By country: 7 Chinese, 5 Japanese, 3 Korean, 2 American, one each from Taiwan, Britain and Sweden. Hong Kong has 7 of the tickers, Tokyo 5. Only 3 are on Nasdaq in the United States ([Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/), [Tesla](/companies/tesla/) and Alphabet via [Google DeepMind](/companies/google-deepmind/)); the 4 NYSE names (Honda, Sony, Toyota, Xpeng) each also have an Asian ticker.

## The list

| Company | Exchange, ticker | Country | Humanoid status in our record |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Chery](/companies/chery/) | HKEX: 9973 | CN | [Mornine](/robots/chery-mornine/) dealership greeter, enterprise only |
| [Dobot](/companies/dobot/) | HKEX: 2432 | CN | [Atom](/robots/dobot-atom/) on preorder, $27,500 |
| [Foxconn](/companies/foxconn/) | TWSE: 2317 | TW | No humanoid of its own on file; UBTech customer |
| [GAC Group](/companies/gac/) | SSE: 601238, HKEX: 2238 | CN | GoMate prototype, not for sale |
| [Google DeepMind](/companies/google-deepmind/) | NASDAQ: GOOGL | GB | Gemini Robotics models, no robot |
| [Hexagon](/companies/hexagon/) | Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B | SE | [AEON](/robots/hexagon-aeon/) in pilots, enterprise only |
| [Hitachi](/companies/hitachi/) | TYO: 6501 | JP | EMIEW, discontinued |
| [Honda](/companies/honda/) | TYO: 7267, NYSE: HMC | JP | [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) retired, programme ended 2018 |
| [Kawasaki](/companies/kawasaki/) | TYO: 7012 | JP | Kaleido prototype, not for sale |
| [Midea](/companies/midea/) | SZSE: 000333, HKEX: 0300 | CN | [Own humanoid](/robots/midea-humanoid/) in own plant, not for sale |
| [Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/) | NASDAQ: NVDA | US | Supplier of models and compute, no robot |
| [Rainbow Robotics](/companies/rainbow-robotics/) | KOSDAQ: 277810 | KR | [RB-Y1](/robots/rainbow-rb-y1/) wheeled platform, in stock, price unverified |
| [Robotis](/companies/robotis/) | KOSDAQ: 108490 | KR | [OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/) and [MINI](/robots/robotis-mini/) in stock, 51 cm and 27 cm |
| [Samsung](/companies/samsung/) | KRX: 005930 | KR | No humanoid of its own; controls Rainbow Robotics |
| [Sony](/companies/sony/) | TYO: 6758, NYSE: SONY | JP | QRIO, cancelled 2006 |
| [Tesla](/companies/tesla/) | NASDAQ: TSLA | US | [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) in own plants, [V3](/robots/tesla-optimus-v3/) prototype, not for sale |
| [Toyota](/companies/toyota/) | TYO: 7203, NYSE: TM | JP | T-HR3 and Punyo, research only |
| [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/) | HKEX: 9880 | CN | [Walker S2](/robots/ubtech-walker-s2/) enterprise only; [Alpha](/robots/ubtech-alpha/) and [Tien Kung Xingzhe](/robots/tien-kung-xingzhe/) in stock |
| [Xiaomi](/companies/xiaomi/) | HKEX: 1810 | CN | CyberOne, research, no product |
| [Xpeng](/companies/xpeng/) | NYSE: XPEV, HKEX: 9868 | CN | [Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) prototype, mass production targeted end of 2026 |

## Four of the twenty will sell you one

Join the companies to the robots and the picture thins out. The 20 account for 37 of the 182 machines in our record. Seven are discontinued, 18 are not for sale, 6 are enterprise only. Six can be ordered, and those six are the entire listed share of the 44 buyable humanoids on our homepage. The other 38 come from private makers.

Three of the six are small: the [UBTech Alpha](/robots/ubtech-alpha/) at 40 cm and $499, the [ROBOTIS MINI](/robots/robotis-mini/) at 27 cm and $539, the 51 cm [ROBOTIS OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/). The [Rainbow RB-Y1](/robots/rainbow-rb-y1/) is a wheeled two-armed research platform, sold since 2024 with a teleoperation rig and no verified public price. That leaves two full-size bipeds: [Dobot Atom](/robots/dobot-atom/), 153 cm, on preorder at CNY 199,000 (about $27,500), teleoperation partial in our record, and [Tien Kung Xingzhe](/robots/tien-kung-xingzhe/), a 170 cm research humanoid UBTech co-developed with Beijing's X-Humanoid centre.

Two more listed companies have customers but no order form: [Chery](/companies/chery/) puts [Mornine](/robots/chery-mornine/) in its own dealerships in China and Malaysia, and [Hexagon](/companies/hexagon/) announced [AEON](/robots/hexagon-aeon/) pilots with Schaeffler and Pilatus on 17 June 2025. The strongest record is [UBTech's Walker S2](/robots/ubtech-walker-s2/): named customers BYD, Foxconn and Zeekr, a reported order book above CNY 800 million, a reported $68,000 price and a lease at about $5,000 a month. Its teleoperation field also reads partial.

Seven listed makers have a humanoid in prototype, pilot or research and nothing you can buy: GAC, Kawasaki, Midea, Tesla, Toyota, Xiaomi and Xpeng. [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) works in small numbers inside Tesla's own plants, and the units shown at We Robot on 10 October 2024 were remotely assisted, as Tesla staff confirmed. Three names (Hitachi, Honda, Sony) are here only for programmes they ended. Four (Foxconn, Google DeepMind, Nvidia, Samsung) have no humanoid of their own on file.

## The pure plays are private

Of the 60 companies we classify as startups, 56 have no ticker. Thirteen of those disclose round sizes in our funding records; the disclosed sum is $4.03 billion. [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) alone accounts for $1.75 billion, at a $39 billion post-money valuation on 16 September 2025. [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) has $570 million on file, [Apptronik](/companies/apptronik/) $403 million. [Boston Dynamics](/companies/boston-dynamics/) is 80 percent owned by Hyundai Motor Group. For scale, UBTech's Hong Kong IPO on 29 December 2023 raised about $130 million.

Two Chinese pure plays are moving towards the market. [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) completed pre-IPO tutoring on 18 July 2025 and filed for Shanghai's STAR Market in November 2025. [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/) agreed in July 2025 to buy 63.6 percent of Shanghai-listed Swancor Advanced Materials for about $293 million, widely read as a route to a listing. Neither carries a ticker in our record yet.

## What "humanoid exposure" means in each case

Before calling a listed company a humanoid company, ask what would change for it if the humanoid programme stopped tomorrow. [Nvidia](/companies/nvidia/) sells GR00T models and a $3,499 Jetson Thor developer kit to almost everyone else and invests in Figure: exposure to the whole field, not to one body. [Foxconn](/companies/foxconn/) is a customer and a factory. [Samsung](/companies/samsung/) owns 35 percent of Rainbow Robotics and has shown no humanoid of its own. The automakers run their robots on their own lines and in their own showrooms. Only [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/), and to a lesser degree [Dobot](/companies/dobot/), sells humanoids to strangers at a price, and both sell other things too. Buying any of the 20 buys a company that does something else. The companies that do nothing but humanoids are, for now, not for sale either.

## Sources
- UBTech Robotics, https://www.ubtrobot.com (UBTech)
- Figure AI valued at $39 billion in latest funding round, https://www.reuters.com/business/figure-ai-valued-39-billion-latest-funding-round-2025-09-16/ (Reuters)
- Unitree, https://www.unitree.com/ (Unitree)
- AgiBot, https://www.agibot.com (AgiBot)
- Samsung Newsroom, https://news.samsung.com/global/ (Samsung)
- Isaac GR00T, https://developer.nvidia.com/isaac/gr00t (Nvidia)
- Hexagon Robotics, https://hexagon.com/company/divisions/robotics (Hexagon)
- Dobot, https://www.dobot-robots.com (Dobot)
- Tesla AI, https://www.tesla.com/AI (Tesla)

================================================================
# Humanoid robots for your home: what you can actually get in 2026
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/humanoid-robots-for-your-home-what-you-can-actually-get/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Explainer | 898 words

> Six machines in our database are built for the home: three take orders, two have a price, none has reached a customer. Here is what a deposit buys today, and what the $299 alternative does not.

Of the 182 humanoids in our database, six are built for the home. Three take orders today, two have a price, and none has been delivered to a paying household as of 4 September 2026. That is the entire consumer humanoid market. Everything else sold as a "home robot" is a prototype you cannot buy or a desktop machine that will not lift a cup.

## Six machines, three order pages, two prices

The six are [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) from [1X](/companies/1x/) and its two earlier prototypes, [NEO Beta](/robots/1x-neo-beta/) and [NEO Gamma](/robots/1x-neo-gamma/); [Isaac 1](/robots/weave-isaac-1/) from [Weave Robotics](/companies/weave-robotics/); [Clone Alpha](/robots/clone-alpha/) from [Clone Robotics](/companies/clone-robotics/); and [Yogi](/robots/cartwheel-yogi/) from [Cartwheel Robotics](/companies/cartwheel-robotics/).

| Machine | Price | Orderable | Delivery stated | Teleoperation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NEO (1X) | $20,000 or $499 a month, $200 deposit | Preorder, US only | US deliveries to start in 2026 | Yes |
| Isaac 1 (Weave) | $7,999 or $449 a month, $250 deposit | Preorder, US only | California autumn 2026, wider US through 2027 | Partial |
| Clone Alpha (Clone Robotics) | No public price | Preorder, 279-unit first batch | None | Unknown |
| NEO Gamma (1X) | None | Not for sale | None | Partial |
| NEO Beta (1X) | None | Not for sale | None | Partial |
| Yogi (Cartwheel) | None | Not for sale | None | Unknown |

Both priced machines ship to the United States only. And the cheaper one is not a walking humanoid: Isaac 1 is 167 centimetres of wheeled base, two arms and grippers, and Weave's own pitch is that dropping the legs is what gets the price to $7,999. NEO is the biped, 165 centimetres and about 30 kilograms, at two and a half times the money. We covered what that $20,000 includes in [The $20,000 body](/blog/the-20000-dollar-body/).

Clone Alpha was announced for preorder in December 2024 with a first batch of 279 units, built on Clone's hydraulic artificial muscles. Twenty-one months later there is no public price, no delivery date and no delivered unit in our record. We list it as a concept.

## What a home humanoid can do today

Every record here carries an autonomy evidence field: what the machine has been seen doing with nobody driving it. Across the six home machines, one entry is filled. For NEO it reads: 1X videos show household chores; reviewers at launch found most tasks were teleoperated. For the other five, Isaac 1 included, the field is empty. We have found no independent account of any of them working unattended.

Teleoperation is the pattern. NEO is marked yes: 1X staff can drive the robot remotely, with the owner's permission, for tasks it cannot do alone. Isaac 1 is marked partial: Weave has said openly that remote operators help finish tasks the robot cannot complete. Clone Alpha is unknown. Of the three you can order, none is documented doing housework alone. What you can order in 2026 is a body in your house, a task list (laundry, beds and tidying from Weave, household chores from 1X), and a person somewhere else who steps in when the software stalls. Both companies say so themselves. It still means a launch video is not evidence of what the machine will do in your kitchen.

## Will it arrive when they say?

Neither seller gives a month. 1X says US deliveries start in 2026, which as of today leaves under four months of that year. Weave says California in autumn 2026 and the wider United States through 2027, a season and a region rather than a date. Clone Robotics gives nothing. Across the database, 34 machines are in stock and 10 are on preorder; every orderable home machine sits in the second pile. Both deposits are refundable, $200 at 1X and $250 at Weave, so waiting costs little. Planning around a date does.

## The $299 alternative will not do chores

Search for a home robot in a shop and you land elsewhere: seven machines in our database cost $1,000 or less and can be ordered now, and all seven are filed under education. The [Reachy Mini](/robots/reachy-mini/) from [Pollen Robotics](/companies/pollen-robotics/) is $299 for a 28 centimetre head and torso with no arms and no legs. The [Robosen K1 Pro](/robots/robosen-k1-pro/) is $299 for a 17-servo walking toy. The [UBTech Alpha](/robots/ubtech-alpha/) is $499, 40 centimetres and 1.6 kilograms, controlled from an app. The [K-Scale Z-Bot](/robots/k-scale-z-bot/) is $999 on preorder, an open-source developer kit. None of the seven has a payload figure in our record, because none is built to carry anything.

They are fine machines for what they are: a child's first robot, a desk toy that dances, a cheap door into the open robotics software stack. Buy one expecting it to unload the dishwasher and you have bought the wrong category. The shop will not tell you.

## Three questions before you put down a deposit

First, how many minutes of an ordinary day does the robot work with no human on the other end, and where does that human sit when there is one. Ask for a number, not a video. Second, what covers the machine after the deposit: 1X lists a three-year warranty on the Early Access purchase, while our record for Isaac 1 carries no warranty term at all, so ask Weave for one in writing. Third, which month and which state. "2026" and "autumn" are the only dates the two orderable machines carry, and this industry has a record of slipping. Plain answers to all three make $200 or $250 a reasonable bet on a category that will exist. Vague answers mean the money is better kept until it does.

## Sources
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X Technologies)
- Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot, https://thenextweb.com/news/weave-robotics-isaac-1-home-robot (The Next Web)
- Weave Isaac 1 robot: the $7,999 robot that folds your laundry, https://the-gadgeteer.com/2026/07/31/weave-isaac-1-robot-folds-laundry/ (The Gadgeteer)
- Weave Robotics, https://www.weaverobotics.com/ (Weave Robotics)
- Clone Robotics, https://clonerobotics.com/ (Clone Robotics)
- Hugging Face's open-source desktop Pollen robot starts at $299, https://www.automate.org/robotics/industry-insights/hugging-faces-open-source-desktop-pollen-robot-starts-at-299 (Association for Advancing Automation)
- Robosen K1 series programmable robots, https://us.robosen.com/collections/k1-series (Robosen)
- Humanoid robots for sale: 2026 guide, https://theresarobotforthat.com/blog/humanoid-robots-for-sale/ (There's A Robot For That)

================================================================
# Tesla Optimus: what the record shows, and what you can buy
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/tesla-optimus-what-the-record-shows/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: News | 978 words

> Four Optimus records, five years, no price and no order page. Here is what Tesla has shown, what it has said about money and dates, and how much of it has been checked by anyone outside Tesla.

You cannot buy a Tesla Optimus. There is no price, no order page and no delivery date. We hold four Optimus records, one for each body [Tesla](/companies/tesla/) has shown since 2021, and every one of them is marked "not for sale". Of the 182 humanoids in our database, 44 can be ordered today. None of them is an Optimus.

That is the answer. What follows is the record behind it.

## Four bodies in five years

| Generation | First shown | Status | Shown doing | Teleoperation | For sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Bumblebee](/robots/tesla-optimus-bumblebee/) | 30 September 2022 | Retired | Walked a short distance on stage, moved boxes in a video | Unknown | No |
| [Gen 1](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-1/) | 30 September 2022, walked March 2023 | Retired | Sorting blocks and yoga poses, in Tesla videos | Partial | No |
| [Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) | 12 December 2023 | Pilot | Cell sorting in a Tesla factory, drinks at an event, popcorn at a diner | Yes | No |
| [V3](/robots/tesla-optimus-v3/) | No reveal date in our record | Prototype | Renderings, 6 November 2025 | Unknown | No |

The programme began on 19 August 2021 at Tesla's AI Day, when Musk announced a 173 cm, 57 kg general-purpose humanoid built on the car autonomy stack. The thing on stage was a dancer in a suit. Thirteen months later, on 30 September 2022, Tesla walked out [Bumblebee](/robots/tesla-optimus-bumblebee/), a development mule built in about six months from off-the-shelf actuators. A second, sleeker body was carried out the same day: [Optimus Gen 1](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-1/), the first Tesla-designed version, with 28 actuators, an 11 DoF tendon-driven hand, a 2.3 kWh battery and a stated 20 kg payload. The 2021 concept was to weigh 57 kg; Gen 1 came in at about 73 kg. It first walked untethered in videos in March 2023.

[Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) followed on 12 December 2023: about 10 kg lighter, 30 percent faster on foot, with an actuated neck, force and torque sensing in the feet and tactile sensing on all fingers. [V3](/robots/tesla-optimus-v3/) is the version Tesla describes as production-intent, with a 22 DoF hand driven from actuators in the forearm. Our record has no reveal date for it. Musk said repeatedly that it would be unveiled in early 2026; what the record holds is renderings shown to shareholders on 6 November 2025.

## Who was holding the controls

Our teleoperation field exists because a demo is not proof. For Optimus it reads unknown, partial, yes, unknown, in that order.

Bumblebee: unknown. Nobody has established how much of the 2022 stage walk was assisted.

Gen 1: partial. Training used human teleoperation and motion capture, and the 2023 videos of block sorting and yoga were mostly scripted or teleop-assisted. No independent deployment was ever reported.

Gen 2: yes. At the We, Robot event in Los Angeles on 10 October 2024, Optimus units walked among guests, poured drinks and played games. Tesla staff confirmed the robots were remotely assisted by humans. The 2024 battery-cell sorting footage from a Tesla factory is Tesla's own; independent confirmation of autonomous production work is limited. We log that deployment's autonomy as "mixed".

V3: unknown, because there is nothing to assess yet.

This is not unusual: 90 of our 182 records carry "partial" and 27 carry "yes". It matters here because Optimus is the machine people look up most, and the footage they find is the footage least likely to show what it does unassisted.

## What Tesla has said about the price

Every Optimus price figure in our record is a target stated by Musk, not a list price.

- 30 September 2022, AI Day: the target price is under $20,000.
- Gen 1 record: a long-term price of $20,000 to $30,000.
- V3 record: $20,000 to $30,000 at volume.

The target has moved once already, from under $20,000 to a $20,000 to $30,000 band, and it has never been attached to an order form. Our buy record for V3 reads: channel not for sale, lead time no consumer order path.

On timing, the record holds these statements: a production line at Fremont planned for 2026; volume production targeted for later in the decade; external sales possibly from 2027; a long-term ambition of one million units a year. On 6 November 2025 Tesla shareholders approved a pay package for Musk with milestones that include delivering one million Optimus robots. A target written into a contract is more than a stage remark. It is still not a delivery.

## Where it works, and why that counts for less here

We log 52 deployments across the database. Optimus has two, and the customer in both is Tesla.

The first is internal: battery cell handling and sorting at Fremont and Gigafactory Texas since May 2024, when Tesla showed two units handling cells. Musk said in 2024 that Tesla expected over 1,000 units working in its factories during 2025. No count has been confirmed or audited. The second is the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles, where one robot served popcorn at the opening in July 2025. Whether it kept doing so is unclear.

A deployment inside the maker's own building is evidence that the machine can be switched on. It is not evidence that a customer would pay for it, keep it running and renew. That is why this site weights it lower, and why the Optimus verdict reads "best for: nobody. There is nothing to buy."

One more entry: Milan Kovac, who led the programme from the start, left Tesla on 6 June 2025. Ashok Elluswamy of Autopilot took over.

## What would change the answer

If you are deciding whether to wait for Optimus, four things have to appear in the record first. A V3 reveal with a physical machine, not renderings. A published price from Tesla, not a target quoted by its chief executive. An order page, or a named external customer. And a teleoperation field that reads "no" for at least one documented task. Until then the honest listing is the one we have: four generations, five years, nothing for sale.

## Sources
- Tesla AI and Robotics, https://www.tesla.com/AI (Tesla)
- Optimus (robot), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_(robot) (Wikipedia)
- Tesla AI Day 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODSJsviD_SU (Tesla (YouTube))
- Optimus - Gen 2, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpraXaw7dyc (Tesla (YouTube))
- Humanoid robot prices, 2026 guide, https://robotsourced.com/pricing/humanoid-robots/ (RobotSourced)
- Humanoid robots for sale: 2026 guide, https://theresarobotforthat.com/blog/humanoid-robots-for-sale/ (There's A Robot For That)

================================================================
# The $20,000 body: what NEO's price actually buys
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/the-20000-dollar-body/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Explainer | 982 words

> 1X is the first company to put a humanoid in front of households with a real price and a real order button. Read the small print and you are buying two things: a machine, and a person somewhere else.

Every other humanoid on our list is sold to a company, a lab or a school. NEO is sold to you. On 28 October 2025, [1X](/companies/1x/) opened preorders for [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) at $20,000, or $499 a month on subscription, with $200 refundable to hold a place and deliveries stated to start in 2026 in the United States. That alone puts it in a category of one: it is the first humanoid marketed directly to households at a published price.

## The order sheet

NEO's buy record is the most complete we hold: a price, a monthly rate, a deposit, a warranty and a delivery window. No other maker among our 42 buy records states a warranty.

| Item | What 1X states |
|---|---|
| Purchase price | $20,000 |
| Subscription | $499 a month |
| Deposit | $200, refundable |
| Warranty | Three years on the Early Access purchase |
| Lead time | US deliveries stated to start in 2026 |
| Ships to | United States only |
| Configurations | One |

Two things stand out. The price is official, meaning it appears on 1X's own page, not in a press report; only 8 of the 35 prices in our records can say that. And there is one configuration. No EDU tier, no hands upgrade, no compute option. Compare the [Unitree G1 ladder](/blog/unitree-g1-cheap-one-cannot-run-your-code/), where headline and developer price are $30,400 apart.

## What the money buys

The machine is 165 cm tall and about 30 kg, tendon-driven, with five-finger hands, a stated payload of 25 kg and a stated runtime of four hours, dressed in a soft knitted suit. A light, padded robot with compliant tendons can be let near a child or a glass table, which is the entire point of a home machine. It will not lift your washing machine, and 1X does not claim it will.

What 1X does not publish matters too. Our record holds no joint count, no compute specification and no sensor list for NEO. The software is named (the 1X Redwood model and the 1X World Model); the hardware is described in prose.

The money also buys a service. NEO ships with what 1X calls Expert Mode: with the owner's permission, 1X staff can take over the robot remotely and do the task it cannot yet do on its own. Our record marks NEO's teleoperation as yes, not partial. Reviewers at launch, the Wall Street Journal among them, reported that most of the household chores demonstrated were driven this way. 1X has been unusually open about it; the industry norm is to let the launch video imply autonomy and clarify later.

## How 1X got here

1X was founded in Norway in 2014 as Halodi Robotics, renamed in 2023, and now sits in Palo Alto with engineering in Moss, Norway. Its first humanoid, [EVE](/robots/1x-eve/), was a wheeled machine that patrolled buildings for ADT Commercial and collected training data; it is discontinued. NEO is the third generation of the legged line, after [NEO Beta](/robots/1x-neo-beta/) on 30 August 2024 and [NEO Gamma](/robots/1x-neo-gamma/) on 21 February 2025.

The money is on record: a $23.5 million Series A on 23 March 2023 led by the OpenAI Startup Fund with Tiger Global, then a $100 million Series B on 11 January 2024 led by EQT Ventures for the NEO programme. In September 2025 it was reported that 1X was seeking up to $1 billion at a valuation above $10 billion ahead of the launch. We have not verified that the round closed, and 28 October reads as a fundraising event too.

## The cheaper home machine, and why it is cheaper

Join our buy records with the home category and two machines come out: NEO at $20,000, and [Weave Isaac 1](/robots/weave-isaac-1/) at $7,999 or $449 a month with a $250 refundable deposit, first California deliveries stated for autumn 2026. Isaac 1 is 167 cm tall but rolls on a wheeled base instead of walking, which is why it costs $12,001 less. Its teleoperation is marked partial: Weave has said remote operators help with tasks the robot cannot finish alone. A third home machine, [Clone Alpha](/robots/clone-alpha/), takes preorders with no public price. NEO is the only full-size walking humanoid a household can order with a price attached; the rest is in [our home guide](/blog/humanoid-robots-for-your-home-what-you-can-actually-get/).

## What that means for a buyer

For the first year at least you are buying a body in your house that a person elsewhere can inhabit. Whether that is a robot or a telepresence rig depends on how fast the autonomy arrives. Read charitably, $499 a month buys a technology that will improve underneath you. Read coldly, it is a remote operator's time spread across many homes.

Three things to have answered before paying the deposit:

- **How much of a typical day is autonomous now**, in minutes, not in a video.
- **Who the operators are and where they sit.** A camera in your kitchen with a human on the other end is a privacy arrangement, and the launch set off a public debate on exactly that.
- **What the delivery window actually is.** "2026" is a year, not a date, and this industry slips.

## Where it sits in the record

NEO scores 59 out of 100 on our scale, fifth among the 44 machines you can order today. Buyability is 20 out of 20: official price, official store, subscription, stated delivery window. Proof is 4 out of 10: a 2025 home alpha in the houses of employees and early users in the US and Norway, largely teleoperated for data collection, and a consumer deployment that is announced, not delivered. No unit numbers, no named customers, because there cannot be any before the first deliveries in 2026.

If you want a humanoid in your house this year and a seller who says plainly what it can and cannot do, this is the honest offer on the market. If you expected $20,000 to buy an autonomous housekeeper, it does not, and the company is the first to say so.

## Sources
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X Technologies)
- 1X Technologies, https://www.1x.tech/ (1X Technologies)
- 1X newsroom, https://www.1x.tech/discover (1X Technologies)
- Humanoid robots for sale: 2026 guide, https://theresarobotforthat.com/blog/humanoid-robots-for-sale/ (There's A Robot For That)
- Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot, https://thenextweb.com/news/weave-robotics-isaac-1-home-robot (The Next Web)

================================================================
# The uncanny valley, and why the newest humanoids have no face
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/the-uncanny-valley-and-the-faceless-humanoid/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Explainer | 947 words

> Masahiro Mori warned in 1970 that a nearly human face repels. Of the 182 humanoids in our record, four describe one, and none of the four does physical work for a customer.

We keep records on 182 humanoid robots. Search them for a machine with a face of its own, skin and expressions included, and you find four. Two are torsos, one is an option, one a prototype. Of the 72 records in the categories where someone pays for a task, one mentions a face, and it is the option, on a machine you cannot order yet. That is a decision, and the records show why.

## What the uncanny valley actually says

Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist, published a short essay in 1970. His claim: as a machine looks more human, people warm to it, until it gets very close and the reaction flips to unease. A hand with skin that is slightly wrong is worse than a hand that is clearly a tool. That dip is the valley. Mori meant it as a warning. For decades the robots that made the news stood in it.

## The four machines with a face

[Sophia](/robots/sophia/), from [Hanson Robotics](/companies/hanson-robotics/), was activated in February 2016 and given Saudi citizenship on 25 October 2017. It is an upper-body machine with cameras in the eyes and chest; the legs added in 2018 were a research add-on. Its dialogue can be scripted or operator assisted.

[Ameca](/robots/engineered-arts-ameca/), from [Engineered Arts](/companies/engineered-arts/), was unveiled in December 2021 and is known for realistic facial expressions and LLM-driven conversation. Also upper-body, legs still experimental. It is sold and rented to museums, labs and events; its Dubai museum deployment is logged as mixed autonomy.

[Noetix Hobbs](/robots/noetix-hobbs/) is a 2025 research platform with an expressive bionic face, a prototype that is not for sale.

[Unitree H2](/robots/unitree-h2/), revealed in October 2025, is a full-size 180 cm walker on which [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) offers a human-like face as an option called Bionic Companion. The price is listed at $29,900, there is no buy button, and the autonomy evidence is dance and catwalk demos.

Hanson's [Grace](/robots/grace-hanson/), derived from Sophia, is not counted: its record does not describe the head. The pattern holds: faces belong to machines whose product is the interaction itself. Skin is the same. Two records mention it: [Fourier GR-3](/robots/fourier-gr-3/), sold by [Fourier](/companies/fourier/) for elder care at a reported $100,000 with 31 pressure sensors in a soft skin, and [iCub](/robots/iit-icub/), a research platform with tactile skin. Skin goes where touch is the job.

## What the working machines wear instead

| Machine | What the record says about the head | Sold as |
|---|---|---|
| [Sophia](/robots/sophia/) | Expressive face, cameras in eyes and chest | Media and conference presence |
| [Ameca](/robots/engineered-arts-ameca/) | Realistic facial expressions, cameras in eyes | Rented and sold to museums and events |
| [Unitree H2](/robots/unitree-h2/) | Human-like face as an option | Entertainment platform, $29,900 listed, no order path |
| [Digit](/robots/agility-digit-v4/) | Head with LED eyes, depth cameras, lidar | Tote handling for GXO since June 2024 |
| [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) | Head cameras, soft textile coverings | Home alpha and pilots, not for sale |
| [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) | Soft suit, no face listed | Home robot, $20,000 or $499 a month |
| [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) | Actuated neck, cameras | Tesla factory trials, not for sale |
| [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) | Depth camera and 3D lidar, no face listed | Research platform, $13,500 |

Five categories cover machines someone pays to do a task: general-purpose, industrial, home, logistics, service. They hold 72 of the 182 records. One mentions a face, the H2 option. The other 71 do not.

[Digit](/robots/agility-digit-v4/) is the clearest case. [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) gave the 2023 version a head with LED eyes, two-finger end effectors instead of hands, and a multi-year GXO contract moving totes. The record notes remote monitoring, so its teleoperation is partial.

[Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) lists head cameras, palm cameras and fingertip sensors sensitive to about 3 grams. [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) says Helix runs onboard with no teleoperation, and that training data is collected by teleoperation. Its predecessor [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) loaded sheet metal at BMW Spartanburg for about 11 months without a face.

[NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) from [1X](/companies/1x/) wears a soft suit over a 30 kg body and ships with a disclosed Expert Mode in which a remote human takes over; reviewers at launch found most tasks teleoperated. [Tesla](/companies/tesla/) staff confirmed that [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) units at the We Robot event on 10 October 2024 were remotely assisted.

## Why the face came off

Trust. A worker beside Digit needs to know where it is going, not whether it likes them. LED eyes give the first and refuse the second.

Cost. The two face robots sold as products are torsos. The walkers put their engineering into legs, hands and batteries. No record shows a shipping product with both.

Expectation. A face promises a mind. Sophia's record says operator assisted dialogue, Ameca's says mixed autonomy, Optimus was remotely assisted at Tesla's own event. A face on a teleoperated machine is a claim it cannot back. A visor makes no claim.

None of this is new. In 2005 KAIST put a Hanson Robotics Einstein head on its HUBO walker to greet APEC leaders as [Albert HUBO](/robots/kaist-hubo/). UBTech's 2018 [Walker](/robots/ubtech-walker/) had legs, a torso screen and no arms. Clone Robotics' [Protoclone](/robots/clone-protoclone/) is a faceless android. The face has gone on and off for twenty years. It only looks settled now because the machines finally do something.

## How to read a robot with no face

A faceless machine is not honest by default. A knit suit hides as much as silicone does. Before you trust one, check four things. What sensors the head carries, by name. Whether teleoperation says no, partial or yes, and whether the maker said so before a reporter did. Whether it is sold for a named task to a named customer, or as a general-purpose and entertainment platform. And whether the price has a buy button behind it. The machines that took the face off and still hide the operator deserve the harder look.

## Sources
- Sophia (robot), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_(robot) (Wikipedia)
- Sophia, https://www.hansonrobotics.com/sophia/ (Hanson Robotics)
- Ameca, https://engineeredarts.com/robot/ameca/ (Engineered Arts)
- Unitree H2, https://www.unitree.com/h2 (Unitree)
- Noetix Robotics, https://www.noetixrobotics.com/ (Noetix Robotics)
- Agility Robotics, https://www.agilityrobotics.com/ (Agility Robotics)
- Introducing Figure 03, https://www.figure.ai/news/introducing-figure-03 (Figure AI)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X Technologies)
- Optimus (robot), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_(robot) (Wikipedia)
- Fourier GR-3, https://www.fftai.com/products-gr3 (Fourier)

================================================================
# Unitree G1 at $13,500: why the cheap one cannot run your code
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/unitree-g1-cheap-one-cannot-run-your-code/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Explainer | 995 words

> The most sold humanoid in the world has a price that gets quoted everywhere and a configuration ladder that almost nobody reads. The version in the headline and the version in the lab are $30,400 apart.

[Unitree](/companies/unitree/) announced the [G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) on 13 May 2024 at $16,000 and it is listed today at $13,500. That number did a lot of work: it made the G1 the default humanoid in university labs from Zurich to Shenzhen, and it is why the G1 tops our ranking with 77 out of 100. It is also not the price of the machine most of those articles are describing.

## The ladder

Unitree sells the G1 in three configurations, and the store page is clear if you scroll:

| Configuration | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| G1 standard | $13,500 | The machine in the headline. No secondary development: it is closed to your own code. |
| G1 EDU | $43,900 | Dexterous hands, Jetson Orin compute and the open SDK. This is the one the labs run. |
| G1 EDU Ultimate | $73,900 | The top configuration. |

The $13,500 robot walks, runs, gets up off the floor and does the demonstration routines. It does not run software you wrote. To teach it something, train a policy on it, or bolt it into your own stack, you need the EDU version, and that starts at $43,900. That is a factor of 3.3 between the price everyone quotes and the price a developer pays; the Ultimate is 5.5 times the headline price. Shipping adds $300 to $1,200, and the lead time reads "backordered, ships when restocked".

## What each rung adds

Compute. The standard G1 runs on an 8-core CPU. The EDU versions carry an Nvidia Jetson Orin NX rated at 100 TOPS. A learned policy does not run on the base CPU, and the standard configuration gives you no way to load one anyway.

Hands. The base G1 has 23 degrees of freedom and no hands. The EDU tiers add the Dex3-1 three-finger hand, 7 degrees of freedom each, or five-finger hands, for 43 in total. If your research is manipulation, the headline machine has nothing to manipulate with.

Access. The EDU tier is the one that supports secondary development, Unitree's phrase for running your own code. The sensors on our record (RealSense D435i depth camera, Livox Mid-360 LiDAR, microphone array), the 0.75 kWh battery, two hours of runtime and 2 m/s walk are listed for the G1 as a whole, not per tier. What $30,400 more buys is a computer, a pair of hands and permission.

## Open source, but not the way the word suggests

Unitree's open-source work is real. Our record for the G1 reads: SDK, URDF models and RL training environments are open source; hardware is not. That is unitree_sdk2, unitree_rl_gym and the simulation models, and it is why more third-party code exists for the G1 than for anything else on our list. But the record's open-source flag is false, because the machine is closed, and on the standard configuration even the software door is shut. "Open" attaches to the brand when it belongs to a tier; the 24 machines that claim the word are in [our open-source guide](/blog/open-source-humanoids-what-you-can-actually-build/).

The confusion persists because $13,500 is a remarkable number for a walking humanoid, and remarkable numbers travel, and because the trade press quotes the entry price and moves on: 26 of the 35 prices on our record come from reports, not from the maker's page. The G1 is one of the eight with an official list, which is why we can show the ladder. Only five of our 42 buy records name configurations, twelve in total; the G1's three are the widest spread.

## What the G1 has done on record

Two deployments. The one that matters: universities and AI labs worldwide, active since August 2024, doing locomotion and manipulation research and teleoperation data collection, autonomy marked mixed. Unitree has published no unit count; the record notes reports of thousands sold since 2024. The second is a June 2025 China Mobile tender, where Unitree won the smaller lot, shared with [AgiBot](/companies/agibot/), for showroom and service machines; units and sites are undisclosed.

The G1's teleoperation field reads partial. VR teleoperation runs through open-source projects such as avp_teleoperate, which is how much of the platform's training data gets collected. The four G1s that boxed in Hangzhou on 25 May 2025 were teleoperated. The learned locomotion is the autonomous part: walking, running, standing up from the floor, the routines in many independent lab videos, the boxing at the World Humanoid Robot Games in August 2025.

## The cheaper sibling

If you need locomotion to experiment with and no hands, look at the [R1](/robots/unitree-r1/), announced on 25 July 2025 at CNY 39,900. It has its own ladder: R1-D at $4,290, a stripped configuration; R1 AIR at $4,900, the locomotion research build; R1 standard at $5,900, which adds manipulation. It is 121 cm and 25 kg with 26 degrees of freedom, an 8-core CPU with integrated GPU, and a Jetson option on an EDU variant our record does not price. Its price basis is reported, not official: it also sells through AliExpress and JD.com, where the number moves. Teleoperation is partial here too. No deployment on record yet; it scores 64, third among the machines you can order, and it exists because the G1 EDU costs what it costs.

## What a lab actually needs

To run your own policy you need a robot that accepts your code, compute to execute it, a simulation model to train in, and a way to collect demonstrations. The open URDF and RL environments cover the third, free, on any G1; the teleoperation projects cover the fourth. The first two start at the EDU tier, $43,900.

If you want a humanoid that walks around a classroom, a lobby or a stage on Unitree's own software, the standard G1 is the best value in the category, with nothing near it. If you want to build on it, price the EDU from the start and compare it against what $43,900 buys elsewhere. Several reports in 2025 called the G1 the highest-volume humanoid in the world. We believe that. We would just like the headline to say which G1.

## Sources
- Unitree G1 product page, https://www.unitree.com/g1 (Unitree)
- Unitree G1 in the Unitree store, https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-g1 (Unitree)
- Unitree R1 product page, https://www.unitree.com/R1 (Unitree)
- Humanoid robots for sale: 2026 guide, https://theresarobotforthat.com/blog/humanoid-robots-for-sale/ (There's A Robot For That)
- Humanoid robot prices, 2026 guide, https://robotsourced.com/pricing/humanoid-robots/ (RobotSourced)

================================================================
# What humanoid robots can actually do in 2026
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/what-can-humanoid-robots-actually-do/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Explainer | 922 words

> Of 182 humanoid robots on record, 117 have a human in the loop, 33 have ever worked at a customer site and none has a verified fleet count. Here is what that leaves.

Humanoid robots in 2026 can walk over rough ground and get up when they fall, move totes between a mobile robot and a conveyor, load parts in a handful of car plants under supervision, and do household chores with a person steering from somewhere else. That is the demonstrated list, checked against our record of 182 machines and 52 deployments. Everything else in the launch videos is, for now, a launch video.

## Most humanoids have a person in the loop

| Teleoperation on record | All 182 | Of the 44 you can order |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | 27 | 7 |
| Partial | 90 | 26 |
| No | 31 | 2 |
| Unknown | 34 | 9 |

"Yes" means remotely operated by design, like [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) with its Expert Mode, or [Phoenix](/robots/sanctuary-phoenix/), trained from teleoperated task data. "Partial" is the biggest pile, 90 machines: the legs run a learned controller on their own, the arms are scripted or driven by a person for the camera. That describes [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) and most of the Chinese catalogue.

"No" looks good until you check who is in it. 16 of the 31 are retired or discontinued, and 10 of the remaining 15 are university research platforms. That leaves five working machines whose maker states there is no remote operator, among them [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/), [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) and [Galbot G1](/robots/galbot-g1/). Even there, Figure's Helix model was trained on teleoperated data. Of the 44 machines you can order today, two are marked "no", both older platforms: [Kawada Nextage](/robots/kawada-nextage/) and [Robotis OP3](/robots/robotis-op3/).

122 of the 182 have any autonomy evidence recorded. For 60 machines we found nothing beyond a reveal.

## Five things they demonstrably do

**Walk, run, fall and stand up.** This is the solved part. [Tiangong Ultra](/robots/tiangong-ultra/) finished the 21.1 km Beijing E-Town half marathon in 2 h 40 min 42 s on 19 April 2025. [AgiBot A2](/robots/agibot-yuanzheng-a2/) walked 106 km from Suzhou to Shanghai in November 2025. [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/) played autonomous football at RoboCup 2025 and stood up after falls. All three are flagged "partial"; the claim that holds is the locomotion, a learned policy running on the robot.

**Move totes in a warehouse.** [Digit](/robots/agility-digit-v4/) from [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) has moved totes from mobile robots onto conveyors at a GXO facility in Flowery Branch, Georgia, since October 2023, converted to a multi-year robots-as-a-service contract in June 2024. GXO calls it the first formal commercial humanoid deployment; we mark it autonomous and active. Fleet size: not published. [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/) ran a GXO tote pilot in 2024 as a proof of concept.

**Pilot in car plants.** 18 of the 52 deployments are automotive. [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) loaded sheet metal parts into fixtures at BMW Spartanburg for about 11 months across 2024 and 2025. BMW confirmed it, the pilot has ended, fleet size not published. [Walker S1](/robots/ubtech-walker-s1/) from [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/) handles boxes and does inspection alongside AMRs at BYD, Zeekr, Foxconn and Audi FAW, all marked mixed autonomy. Of the 26 deployments that are active or in pilot, 6 are marked autonomous and 20 mixed.

**Household chores, with a person elsewhere.** [1X](/companies/1x/) ran a home alpha in 2025 and opened NEO preorders on 28 October 2025 at $20,000. Reviewers at launch found most tasks were teleoperated; 1X calls this Expert Mode. Figure 03's home alpha is marked mixed, and Figure has not said how many homes are in it. No household humanoid is autonomous at a customer's address yet.

**Serve as a research platform.** The G1 is in labs worldwide, widely reported in the thousands, with no official count. [iCub](/robots/iit-icub/) and [NAO](/robots/aldebaran-nao/) have been research and teaching machines since 2008. One retail exception: [Galbot G1](/robots/galbot-g1/) picks medicines in unstaffed Beijing pharmacies, marked autonomous and active, target 100 stores, verified counts pending.

## What they do only on camera

[Astribot S1](/robots/astribot-s1/) folds clothes and pours wine in its 2024 launch video: partial teleoperation, pilot customers, none named. [Dobot Atom](/robots/dobot-atom/) made breakfast at launch. [Unitree H2](/robots/unitree-h2/) dances and walks a catwalk; verification is limited to trade shows. [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) units at We Robot on 10 October 2024 were confirmed by Tesla staff to be remotely assisted, and its factory battery-cell sorting has no independent confirmation. [Xpeng Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) walked so smoothly on 6 November 2025 that Xpeng cut open its leg on stage to prove nobody was inside. None of this is fake. None of it is a deployment either.

## Nobody will say how many are working

The field `units_deployed_est` is empty for all 182 robots. Of the 52 deployments, 6 carry a unit number, adding up to 41 robots: 20 [Walker S](/robots/ubtech-walker-s/) ordered by Dongfeng Liuzhou in February 2024, 16 H1 dancing at the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, 2 Digits at Ford in 2020, one Optimus serving popcorn, one Phoenix for a week at a Mark's store, one Robonaut on the ISS. Every large-sounding deployment, BMW, GXO, BYD, Mercedes, has "not published" against fleet size.

## What to ask before you believe it

If you are choosing a machine, ask for four things. One: an unedited take of the task with the whole room visible, and a plain answer to "who is holding the controller". Two: the customer's name and the customer's own statement, not the maker's. BMW and GXO said it themselves; most did not. Three: the number of robots at that site and the hours they have run. Four: the same task on your parts, in your building. A maker that can supply all four belongs in the "no" row of the table. The rest are selling a video, and for 117 of the 182 machines on record the human in the loop is already in the file.

## Sources
- Unitree G1 product page, https://www.unitree.com/g1 (Unitree)
- Agility Robotics, https://www.agilityrobotics.com/ (Agility Robotics)
- GXO newsroom, https://gxo.com/news/ (GXO)
- Figure news, https://www.figure.ai/news (Figure AI)
- Helix: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Generalist Humanoid Control, https://www.figure.ai/news/helix (Figure AI)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X)
- UBTech Walker S1 page, https://www.ubtrobot.com/ (UBTech)
- X-Humanoid official site, https://www.x-humanoid.com/ (X-Humanoid)
- Galbot official site, https://www.galbot.com/ (Galbot)
- Xpeng newsroom, https://www.xpeng.com/news (Xpeng)

================================================================
# Where humanoids actually work: 52 deployments, counted
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/where-humanoids-actually-work-52-deployments/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: News | 1039 words

> We track 52 humanoid deployments at named sites. Eighteen are in car plants, exactly half are live, and six say how many robots turned up. Those six add up to 41 machines.

Humanoid robots work in 52 places we can name and source. Eighteen of those are car plants. Twenty-six are live today, as an active deployment or a pilot. Six disclose how many robots are on site, and those six add up to 41 machines. That is the whole counted total, in an industry that talks in thousands.

## Car plants first, then everything else

| Sector | Rows | Active | Pilot | Announced | Unclear | Ended | Rows with a unit count | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automotive | 18 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 20 |
| Other manufacturing and services | 11 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Logistics | 5 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Entertainment | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 16 |
| Retail | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| Research | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Home | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Healthcare | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Hospitality | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |

Automotive is more than a third of the record, and 11 of its 18 rows are in China. BYD, Zeekr, Geely Auto, Audi FAW NEV, BAIC, Dongfeng Liuzhou and Nio host [UBTech](/companies/ubtech/)'s [Walker S1](/robots/ubtech-walker-s1/) and [Walker S](/robots/ubtech-walker-s/). Mercedes-Benz runs [Apollo](/robots/apptronik-apollo/). BMW ran [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/). Hyundai has announced the electric [Atlas](/robots/boston-dynamics-atlas-electric/). Schaeffler has both [Digit](/robots/agility-digit/) and [4NE-1](/robots/neura-4ne-1/). Magna took [Phoenix](/robots/sanctuary-phoenix/). UBTech alone accounts for 9 of the 52 rows. China (22) and the United States (16) hold 38 rows; ten other countries share 14.

What the robots do there is narrow. Of the 34 industrial rows, 24 describe handling, inspection, sorting or moving totes. Six mention assembly, and it is light: [Xpeng Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) drives screws on Xpeng's own P7 line, Walker S applies labels and checks seat belts at Dongfeng. The job a humanoid does is to pick something up, carry it, and look at it.

## Half the rows are live, half are not

The status column reads 11 active, 15 pilot, 8 announced, 8 unclear, 10 ended. Active plus pilot is 26, half.

A pilot on this site is a robot doing work at a named customer's site for a limited time. It counts as a deployment, and in the Humanoid Index a named pilot scores like a named active row: 20 of the 50 deployment points, 28 for three or more. It cannot climb higher: the 32 to 50 band needs verified unit counts of ten, a hundred and a thousand, and no robot in our record gets there.

Announced means a customer name and no robot yet: Hyundai, the China Mobile tender, [1X](/companies/1x/)'s consumer deliveries. Unclear means we found the start and not the present: Sanctuary at Magna, the [Optimus](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) at the Tesla Diner, Amazon's Digit test, three UBTech car plants. The ended row that matters most is Figure 02 at BMW Spartanburg, a production run Figure describes as 11 months, from August 2024 until [Figure AI](/companies/figure-ai/) moved to [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) in late 2025. The fleet size was never published.

## Six rows put a number on it

The 41: twenty Walker S at Dongfeng Liuzhou, an order announced in February 2024, status pilot. Sixteen [Unitree H1](/robots/unitree-h1/) dancing at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala on 28 January 2025, for one night. Two Digits at Ford in 2020. One [Robonaut 2](/robots/nasa-robonaut-2/) on the ISS from 2011 to 2018. One Phoenix at a Mark's store in Langley for one week in March 2023, teleoperated, 110 tasks. One Optimus serving popcorn at the Tesla Diner in July 2025, continuation unclear.

Sixteen of the 41 are a dance and 20 are an order. Only the Dongfeng row is still live. Of the 15 rows we mark autonomous, one discloses units, and it is the dance.

The thousands live in a different column. Our notes record the claims: UBTech planned about 500 [Walker S2](/robots/ubtech-walker-s2/) deliveries in 2025, [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) is widely reported to have sold thousands of [G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) units to labs with no official count, [Galbot](/companies/galbot/) targets 100 unstaffed pharmacies. Each is a plan, a target or a report, not a count at a named site, so none of it goes in the units column. The only machines here with real volume behind them are [Pepper](/robots/softbank-pepper/), about 27,000 built before production stopped in 2021, and [NAO](/robots/aldebaran-nao/), more than 13,000 sold by 2018. One is 120 cm tall, the other 58 cm. Neither is what anyone means today by a humanoid at work.

## Mixed is the most common word for autonomy

The autonomy column reads 31 mixed, 15 autonomous, 2 teleoperated, 4 unknown. Mixed means the maker claims autonomy and the footage or fine print keeps a human in the loop. In automotive it is 14 of 18. The two teleoperated rows are both Phoenix, whose own record lists teleoperation as yes.

Nine of the 15 autonomous rows are commercial work, by Figure 02, Apollo, Digit, [Galbot G1](/robots/galbot-g1/) and the announced Atlas. The other six are three Pepper rows, NAO, ASIMO and the dance. The strongest row is Digit at GXO's Spanx site in Flowery Branch: a pilot from October 2023, a multi year contract from June 2024, autonomous, still active, fleet size not published.

The robot records add a layer. Their teleoperation field says yes for [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/), Optimus Gen 2, Phoenix and Robonaut 2, partial for Walker S1, Walker S2, Digit, Apollo, Atlas, 4NE-1, the G1 and the H1, and no for Figure 02, Figure 03, Galbot G1 and Pepper. So NEO's household chores may be done by a remote operator; 1X's own 2025 home alpha is recorded as largely teleoperated.

## How to read the next deployment announcement

Look for four things. A customer name: 46 of our 52 rows have one, and an undisclosed customer is a claim, not a deployment. A unit count at the site: 6 of 52 have one, and a plan, a target or an order is not a count. A status word: pilot is real work with an end date, announced is no robot yet. And the autonomy claim, checked against the machine's teleoperation record. If the two disagree, believe the record.

If you are deciding whether to buy, invest or bet a production line on a humanoid, the sourced evidence is 41 machines at customer sites, 20 of them in one order. Everything larger is a forecast.

## Sources
- UBTech, https://www.ubtrobot.com/ (UBTech)
- Figure news, https://www.figure.ai/news (Figure AI)
- GXO newsroom, https://gxo.com/news/ (GXO)
- Agility Robotics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agility_Robotics (Wikipedia)
- Sanctuary AI news, https://www.sanctuary.ai/news (Sanctuary AI)
- Unitree, https://www.unitree.com/ (Unitree)
- Amazon announces 2 new ways it's using robots to assist employees, https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-introduces-new-robotics-solutions (Amazon)
- Pepper (robot), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_(robot) (Wikipedia)

================================================================
# Why hands are the hardest part of a humanoid
URL: https://humanoid.observer/blog/why-hands-are-the-hardest-part/
Published: 2026-09-05 | Section: Explainer | 939 words

> Of 182 humanoids on record, 96 describe their hands and 13 publish a degrees-of-freedom figure for them. The word dexterous appears 21 times and comes with a number once.

Our database holds 182 humanoid robots. 96 of them say anything about the hands. 13 give a degrees-of-freedom figure for the hand. 21 records use the word "dexterous", and 20 of those never say how many joints that means. Makers describe the hand least and charge for it most, and both facts come from the same problem.

## Why a hand is harder than a leg

A leg has a handful of joints, each with room for a large motor. A hand packs far more joints into a volume the size of a hand, and every joint needs its own actuator, position sensing and wiring. The motor that can hold a drill is too big for a finger. The motor that fits in a finger cannot hold the drill.

There are three ways out. Put small motors in the fingers or palm and accept a low joint count. Or move the motors into the forearm and pull the fingers with tendons: [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) from [1X](/companies/1x/) is tendon driven, and so was the 11-DOF hand on [Tesla](/companies/tesla/)'s [Optimus Gen 1](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-1/). Tesla's announced [Optimus V3](/robots/tesla-optimus-v3/) hand claims 22 DOF with forearm-mounted actuators; it is a prototype with no autonomy evidence in our record. Or use fluid: [Phoenix](/robots/sanctuary-phoenix/) from [Sanctuary AI](/companies/sanctuary-ai/) pairs an electric body with miniature hydraulic hands of about 20 DOF and tactile sensing. Its pilots used teleoperation.

The joint count shows how much of the machine the hands are. The [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) has 23 DOF as a body and up to 43 with hands fitted, so the hands add almost as many joints as the rest of the robot. [Xpeng Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) lists 82 DOF in total with 22 per hand: more than half of its joints are in its hands. Every one is an actuator, a sensor and a thing that can break.

## Hand DOF has barely moved since 2011

Where a hand DOF figure is published, it runs from 5 (the hobbyist [InMoov](/robots/inmoov/), 3D printed with tendons) to 22 ([Xpeng Iron](/robots/xpeng-iron/) and the announced Optimus V3), with a median of 12 across the 13 records. [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/) and [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) sit at 16. [Optimus Gen 2](/robots/tesla-optimus-gen-2/) has 11. [Kepler K1](/robots/kepler-k1/) and [Fourier GR-2](/robots/fourier-gr-2/) have 12.

[Honda](/companies/honda/)'s [ASIMO](/robots/asimo/) had 13-DOF multi-fingered hands in its 2011 version, above today's median. NASA's [Robonaut 2](/robots/nasa-robonaut-2/) launched to the ISS on 24 February 2011 with 12 DOF per hand, operated by crew and ground controllers. The joint count has not moved much in fifteen years. The software people hope to run on it has.

Only one machine you can order has a hand DOF figure in our data: the G1's optional Dex3-1 three-finger hand, at 7 DOF.

## The robots that have worked mostly have grippers

We sorted the hands text on all 96 records.

| Hand type as described | Machines | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Five-finger or multi-finger, fitted as standard | 43 | Figure 03, Optimus Gen 2, NEO, Walker S2 |
| Optional, or gripper-or-hand variants | 18 | Unitree G1, H1, H2 and R1, Fourier GR-1, AgiBot A2 |
| No hands | 13 | MIT Humanoid, Berkeley Humanoid, Robotis OP3 |
| Gripper or two-finger | 11 | Digit, HRP-5P, Weave Isaac 1, RB-Y1 |
| Simple or unspecified hands | 9 | Honda P2, HRP-4, Sophia |
| Three-finger | 2 | DRC-HUBO, HRP-3 |
| Nothing said about the hands | 86 | |

The gripper row holds the most convincing work. [Digit](/robots/agility-digit-v4/) from [Agility Robotics](/companies/agility-robotics/) uses two-finger end effectors built for totes and has moved them for GXO at a Spanx facility since 2024, autonomously with remote monitoring, which our record marks as partial teleoperation. AIST's [HRP-5P](/robots/hrp-5p/) has two-finger hands and screwed a gypsum board to a wall by itself in a 2018 video, with no teleoperation. [Weave Isaac 1](/robots/weave-isaac-1/) folds laundry with grippers for $7,999, and Weave says remote operators step in when it cannot finish.

In the five-finger row of 43, 8 say teleoperation yes, 19 partial, 12 unknown and 4 no. The 4 are [Figure 02](/robots/figure-02/), [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/), Sony's [QRIO](/robots/sony-qrio/) and [WABOT-2](/robots/wabot-2/). The most human-looking hands are, so far, the ones most often moved by a human somewhere else.

## Hands are the line item

In our price data, hands turn the cheap configuration into the expensive one. The [Unitree G1](/robots/unitree-g1/) is $13,500 as standard and $43,900 as the EDU with dexterous hands, Jetson Orin compute and the open SDK; [Unitree](/companies/unitree/) does not price the hands on their own. The [Unitree R1](/robots/unitree-r1/) AIR is $4,900; the R1 standard, which "adds manipulation", is $5,900. The [Booster T1](/robots/booster-t1/) from [Booster Robotics](/companies/booster-robotics/) is $29,800 basic and $50,925 as the "Standard with grippers" through distributors: $21,125 more for grippers, not fingers.

Of the 44 humanoids you can order, 4 ship five-finger hands as standard: [Dobot Atom](/robots/dobot-atom/) at $27,500 on preorder, [NEO](/robots/1x-neo/) at $20,000 with its Expert Mode teleoperation, and [Leju Kuavo](/robots/leju-kuavo/) and [Qinglong](/robots/qinglong/) with no public price. 11 list hands as an option or a variant. 26 say nothing about the hands in their record.

## What to check before you pay for "dexterous"

Ask for the DOF per hand and how many of those joints have their own motor; 20 of the 21 records that say "dexterous" do not give the number. Ask where the motors are, in the fingers, in the forearm on tendons, or hydraulic, because that decides weight and what breaks first. Ask about touch: 9 of 96 hands descriptions mention tactile sensing, and [Figure 03](/robots/figure-03/) is the only one that puts a figure on it, fingertips sensitive to about 3 grams plus palm cameras. Ask whether the hand is in the quoted price or in the next configuration up. And ask what the hand has done with nobody on a controller. If your task is totes or boards, the machines that have actually done it had two fingers.

## Sources
- Unitree G1 in the Unitree store, https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-g1 (Unitree)
- Introducing Figure 03, https://www.figure.ai/news/introducing-figure-03 (Figure AI)
- Tesla AI and Robotics, https://www.tesla.com/AI (Tesla)
- Sanctuary AI, https://www.sanctuary.ai/ (Sanctuary AI)
- NEO, https://www.1x.tech/neo (1X)
- Agility Robotics, https://www.agilityrobotics.com/ (Agility Robotics)
- AIST HRP-5P press release, https://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/list/latest_research/2018/20181116/en20181116.html (AIST)
- Booster T1 humanoid robot, https://www.generationrobots.com/en/404278-booster-t1-humanoid-robot.html (Generation Robots)
- InMoov, https://inmoov.fr/ (InMoov)