The first shot of the humanoid robot price war started ahead of schedule?

Reporter Chen Xuebo and Lu Zhikun report from Beijing

Humanoid robot Unitree G1 Source: Unitree Technology WeChat public account

What range should the price of a home humanoid robot be? In recent years, some domestic companies have sold humanoid robots for millions of yuan, and Musk has set a target of 20,000 US dollars (about 145,000 yuan). Recently, a Chinese humanoid robot company has shouted out a price that has dazzled the industry: 99,000 yuan.

On May 13, Unitree Technology released the humanoid robot Unitree G1, with a price tag of "99,000 yuan". On May 15, the product was launched on the e-commerce platform. Is this lower price than previously predicted by the market, indicative of an industry trend? What are the trade-offs made in the features of the new product?

Gao Chao, a senior analyst at CCID Consulting Advanced Manufacturing Industry Research Center, told China Business News that humanoid robots are still in the early stage of industrialization, and most humanoid robot companies are still in the stage of prototype development and small batch trial production.

The basic version is mainly used for display

Breaking bottle caps, smashing walnuts, flipping pots, running, dancing sticks, curling up ...... In the product video released by Unitree, this robot can flexibly complete a series of tasks with mechanical arms like a human. From the point of view of parameters, the G1 is about 127cm tall, weighs about 35kg, is equipped with lidar and depth camera, has a battery life of up to 2 hours, and a moving speed of 2m/s. At the same time, it has 23~43 joint motors, with a large joint movement angle space.

However, the 99,000 yuan G1 may not include dexterous hands, and another model of G1 EDU robot in addition to more advantages in key torque, load, waist degrees of freedom, hand dexterity, etc., can also choose to add NVIDIA's high-computing power industrial robot platform Jetson Orin. Obviously, the configuration gap between the G1 and the G1EDU is not small.

The reporter saw on the e-commerce platform that the price of G1 after the discount is 98,752 yuan, and the price of G1 EDU's robot needs to "contact customer service". The customer service told reporters that G1 is the basic version and does not support secondary development, mainly for display; G1EDU is an "educational version", which can be redeveloped, mainly for scientific research, but the specific price has not yet been determined.

Prior to this, Unitree Technology had released the humanoid robot H1, which was estimated to be priced at 90,000 US dollars (about 650,000 yuan) at that time. The company's previously listed industrial-grade quadruped robots have been applied to factory inspection, park security, exploration and rescue and other scenarios, and the main customers include substations, chemical plants, etc., which can allow quadruped robots to replace humans to perform tasks in some dangerous scenarios, such as toxic gas or radiation environments.

The reporter expressed the interview request to Unitree Technology through the customer service phone and email, but failed to get a reply. The reporter also contacted the WeChat public account of Unitree Technology, and the other party said that "there will be a special person to reply", but there was no specific response as of press time.

Gao Chao pointed out that compared with other full-size humanoid robots that have been released so far, the most obvious "reduction" of the Unitree G1 basic version and G1 EDU version is that its height is only 1.27 meters, which is lower than the common 1.6~1.7 meters, the basic version does not contain dexterous hands, the EDU version is equipped with three-fingered dexterous hands, and most other humanoid robots are equipped with five-fingered dexterous hands. However, G1 is basically above the "average line", which is enough to achieve basic functions.

Such a product is very in line with the needs of users in the field of education and scientific research, that is, to purchase a "sparrow is small" universal machine platform at a lower cost for teaching and training and software and hardware development, which will also promote the development of the humanoid robot industry. The disadvantage is that as a typical basic version of the machine, this product cannot be directly applied to most final scenarios, and needs to be customized and upgraded according to needs, or the mature software and hardware developed are ported to other functional machines for application.

"Looking back on the development process of other types of robots and even many new technology products, reducing product prices is one of the most intuitive factors to stimulate market demand and promote product applications." Gao Chao pointed out that because reducing the selling price can solve the problem that potential users dare not buy and cannot afford it, that is, it reduces the cost of trial and error and capital occupation of users, and increases the willingness to buy. Taking industrial applications as an example, when the price of humanoid robots with the same function is reduced to the salary of workers in the same position for about 1 year, humanoid robots are expected to usher in an explosion in this field. In addition, if the actual application effect is good, the robot company can also obtain revenue through subsequent functional module upgrades, software upgrades, extended services and other forms, which is also a common practice in many other technology product fields.

The field of application is about to expand

In the past year, the humanoid robot industry has entered a fast lane. In April of this year, Boston Dynamics announced the retirement of the hydraulic Atlas robot, followed by the launch of the all-electric Atlas robot.

The domestic humanoid robot industry is also developing rapidly. On December 29, 2023, UBTECH was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and became the "first stock of humanoid robots". On April 29 this year, the "Tiangong" robot platform led by UBTECH realized the world's first full-scale humanoid run with pure electric drive. In addition, at present, many domestic enterprises have made important breakthroughs in humanoid robot bionic and humanoid robot AI decision-making.

In November last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", which proposed that by 2025, the humanoid robot innovation system will be initially established, and a number of key technologies such as "brain, cerebellum, and limbs" will make breakthroughs. Cultivate 2~3 eco-enterprises with global influence and a number of specialized, special and new small and medium-sized enterprises, create 2~3 industrial development clusters, and nurture and develop a number of new businesses, new models and new business formats.

Gao Chao told reporters that the market size of Chinese humanoid robots in 2023 will be about 3 billion yuan, most of which are used as a "public" general platform in the field of education and scientific research, that is, teachers and students can use it for teaching practice, software developers can use it to test and optimize algorithms, hardware developers can test the performance of components based on it, or customize the structure for special scenarios. In addition, there are some humanoid robots that are used in exhibitions, performances, and other scenes. In the future, humanoid robots are expected to be widely used in special, industrial, people's livelihood and other fields.

(Editor: Wang Jinlong Review: Tong Haihua Proofreader: Yan Jingning)