Guides, comparisons and analyses to buy, compare and choose the right humanoid robot. Articles by the Botoide editorial team.
An uncaptioned repost of a video showing a "Tesla Optimus robot" behind the wheel came close to 200,000 views, according to El País. There was no robot: just a fan in a costume, and an original joke lost in the copying. Here are the three details that gave the costume away — and how to spot them yourself.
Read article →Tidying the living room is worth 75 points, folding the laundry 100, the washing 125. At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, a housework event scores machines on ordinary chores, in a show flat — and halves the score the moment a human picks up the controller.
Read article →Beijing has crowned a pair of legs that beat the records of Usain Bolt and Wayde van Niekerk. The same week, State Grid committed 6.8 billion yuan to 8,500 machines and reserved only 500 of them for humanoids — the unit price buried in the package explains why.
Read article →XPeng is housing its robotics business in a separate entity, Dogotix, which has raised more than $900 million in its first funding round. The post-money valuation exceeds $6.3 billion, up from $5 billion beforehand.
Read article →Nori Robotics' Nori A3 is listed at 1,688 dollars, the full price with no deposit, for a delivery announced for autumn 2026. Nearly twelve times less than 1X’s NEO — provided you accept that you will have to teach it the tasks yourself, or go and fetch them from the skills marketplace the manufacturer has announced.
Read article →Chinese manufacturers claim more than 40,000 humanoid robot shipments in the first half of 2026, and a news agency dispatch published the same day credits them with 97% of global shipments. Both figures are self-reported, taken from a report presented on 20 August at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, and no independent count corroborates them.
Read article →Unitree lists on the STAR Market valued at 60.993 billion yuan, with an initial free float announced at 7.44% of capital, in the very week when we learn that its entry ticket has fallen to 26,900 yuan — against roughly 650,000 in 2023 — and when AgiBot takes the world’s top spot from it in shipped volume. The share price is not measuring the scarcity of the robot, it is measuring the scarcity of the paper.
Read article →It is not a humanoid robot. At the Don d’Issé nursing home, twelve residents gathered around a French-made interactive kiosk that makes no decisions. On this kiosk model, it is the residents, their families or carers who choose the tracks. That is what it does — and here is the cost of a Mélo kiosk in another nursing home.
Read article →LG Corp. and NVIDIA announced on 13 August 2026 the signing of a memorandum of understanding on robotics, AI factories and mobility. The document foresees the unveiling in the first quarter of 2027 of a bipedal humanoid based on Jetson Thor embedded computing and the Isaac GR00T robotic foundation model.
Read article →Schaeffler announces a high-speed forming process that produces a strain wave gearbox in a few seconds, whereas conventional precision machining takes several minutes. The supplier claims a manufacturing cost reduction of over 25% and a material consumption reduction of over 75%, with series production set to begin in Germany in 2027.
Read article →Vulcan Robotics has published all the plans, schematics and code for Sourccey, its one-metre-tall domestic robot that folds four types of clothing. Everything is there — except the price, with first deliveries expected in September 2026.
Read article →The listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market values the Chinese robot maker at nearly $9.04 billion, or 219.23 times earnings against 38.56 times for its sector average. Online subscription opened on 10 August 2026, with payment due no later than 12 August.
Read article →On 28 July, the FCC added “advanced robotic devices” manufactured outside the United States to its Covered List. The week of 4–10 August was when the industry finished reading the text and realised that the criterion was not the manufacturer’s nationality, but the address of its factory.
Read article →Weave Robotics' Isaac 1, a laundry-folding robot, sells for 7,999 dollars outright or 449 dollars a month. First deliveries announced by the end of 2026, in California — and no, it isn’t always the machine that decides.
Read article →Molex presented MiniMix on 5 August 2026, a range of hybrid connectors that combines power contacts of up to 15.0 A and a 1 Gbit/s 1000BASE-T1 Ethernet link in a single interface. Samples are available from the announcement, with commercial production targeted for the end of 2026.
Read article →On 28 July 2026, the FCC added foreign-made mobile robots to its “Covered List”. What the decision does: block the certification of future models in the United States. What it doesn’t do: stop machines already sold. The rule is American.
Read article →It doesn’t move a centimetre, it touches nothing, and it already equips at least a thousand elderly people in fourteen English local authorities. That is what the Genie really does — and above all, what it cannot do.
Read article →Announced in late July 2026, Unitree Robotics’ listing on the STAR Market involves 40.45 million new shares, representing 10% of the share capital post-issuance. The calendar published by the Shanghai Stock Exchange placed the price consultation on 5 August 2026 and the opening of subscriptions on 10 August 2026.
Read article →The US definition that shifts humanoid robots onto the Covered List contains no anthropomorphic criteria: it catches a remotely piloted mobile device weighing more than 2 kg, controlled via a link of at least 200 kbit/s. No existing fleet is disconnected — only new models lose access to certification, and the actual state of the machines validates the criterion chosen.
Read article →In San Francisco, Tau Robotics charges a service fee of $30 US dollars per hour for cleaning provided by humanoid robots, by invitation only. Two things the price doesn’t say: the robot is teleoperated, jointly piloted by a human and an artificial intelligence; and it continuously records the entire visit to your home, footage that is used to train the company’s models.
Read article →BYD will unveil its first physical humanoid prototype, 'Xiao Di', in August 2026 at its 'Di Space' experience centres. The machine is specified at 1.61 m tall and 58.5 kg, with 31 degrees of freedom (DOF) across the entire body, including 7 per hand.
Read article →Two solid studies made headlines this week. In both cases, the headline asserts what the paper refuses to confirm: autonomy that does not exist, morphology that is not there.
Read article →On 15 July, Walden Robotics raised $300 million after five months of real work at Toyota. On 16 July, SoftBank exited Boston Dynamics via a clause written in 2021. That same week, the criteria for money changed.
Read article →The real match of the week was not taking place on the pitch in Incheon, but on the production lines — and China is taking the lead.
Read article →In one week, two markets have listed humanoid robots as an asset class. The robots themselves are still far from justifying the valuations.
Read article →The humanoid robot that folds laundry and unloads the dishwasher is finally available for pre-order. It’s called NEO, costs $499 a month, and delivers on almost all its promises—with one caveat: behind its movements, there is often an employee wearing a virtual reality headset.
Read article →Munich, Paris and Chicago all crowned the same new buzzword — "embodied AI". Read together, their press releases say what none admits alone: the robot’s body is a consumable, and the brain is rented from two or three American vendors.
Read article →On 9 June, the MIIT and SASAC co-signed a quota — 10,000 humanoid robots for commercial use before the end of 2026 — and designated the provinces and state-owned enterprises responsible for its implementation. That same week, China Post, SF Express, Seres and Zoomlion received their robots. The Chinese humanoid demand is not discovered: it is assigned. And it runs on Nvidia.
Read article →From 2 to 8 June, the humanoid sector’s strongest commercial traction went to UBTech’s U1: a silicone companion that reads emotions, cannot be programmed, and performs no task. More than 2,100 reservations in six days — when the same maker’s industrial division had sold just 1,079 robots in all of 2025.
Read article →Tokyo decrees the shift to scaling, Shanghai capitalises on it with the first listing of embodied AI, and the NIST reminds everyone that no consensus metric yet exists. The humanoid industry has listed scale on the market before building the instrument to measure it.
Read article →For a business, the real cost of a robot is not its purchase price. Between reclaimable VAT, depreciation and deductible leasing, the net bill can fall by 30 to 40%. Here’s the full picture.
Read article →Those two little letters "CE" aren’t a quality label — they’re a legal declaration by the manufacturer. For a humanoid robot walking around your home, they change everything. Plain-English explainer.
Read article →Hyundai promises 25,000 Atlas units, Humanoid.ai is gunning for the world title: that’s the set dressing. The week’s only hard metric lies elsewhere — the actuator accounts for 60% of the cost, and the two Western camps have just locked it down on the same day.
Read article →The manufacturer’s list price is never the final price. Between customs duties, VAT, shipping and CE marking, the extra cost can reach 30% to 40%. A full breakdown using a Unitree G1.
Read article →With around ten models available for purchase or pre-order, choosing the right humanoid robot has become a real exercise. Here are the 6 criteria to prioritise before signing.
Read article →A piloted GD01, a human fallback written into the Schaeffler contract, robots leading the Seoul procession: from 12 to 18 May, the sector openly puts the operator back at the centre — the exact opposite of the thread it held all winter.
Read article →On one side, the Chinese consumer humanoid at €16,000; on the other, the American industrial humanoid on lease. Which to choose, and for what?
Read article →At €450/month for a Unitree G1, buying outright no longer makes much sense. Leasing is emerging as the standard route to making the personal robot mainstream.
Read article →While China stacks up humanoids by the thousand, three of the week’s developments — Genesis AI’s GENE-26.5, the Figure 03 deployment at BMW, and the conversion of Tesla’s Fremont line — reveal one and the same Western pivot: abandoning the race for body tonnage to crack dexterous manipulation instead. Two races, two units of account.
Read article →Four truly market-ready robots and one challenger on the horizon. Our 2026 selection with prices, strengths and weaknesses.
Read article →The line between domestic and industrial humanoids isn’t just marketing. It shapes the entire robot specification.
Read article →In the same week, Figure, Apptronik and Meta all made announcements without ever showing their robot doing actual work. Each shifted the ground elsewhere: the assembly line, the sales org chart, the operating system. Three ways of dodging the only question that matters — what can the machine do on its own?
Read article →Beyond the listed price, a humanoid robot has a total cost of ownership that can be surprising. A complete breakdown over 3 years.
Read article →On 27 April, Tokyo-Haneda airport entrusts its luggage to a Unitree G1 — the very model Washington classes as a national security risk. This week, the Japanese ally is adopting what its strategic partner is working to ban: the Chinese humanoid robot is no longer a product, it is a choice of side that the labour shortage renders non-negotiable.
Read article →From 14 to 20 April 2026, the humanoid spectacle and the factory parade almost on the same day. While a robot Honor “beat” the Beijing half-marathon record by means of the regulations, Zhiyuan’s Elf G2 held eight hours non-stop on a real production line. For the first time, verifiable proof of work appears — and the right question ceases to be “who is number one?”.
Read article →Edward Warchocki, a Unitree G1 imported to Poland, racked up tens of millions of views hunting wild boars in Warsaw. Cross-referenced with the admission in Boston that a working humanoid still costs too much, the event reveals what China is truly exporting to Europe: not a worker, but an influencer for hire.
Read article →This week, the rift between spectacle and substance left the China-West axis: Wandercraft’s Calvin-40 carried tyres at Renault’s Douai plant while Unitree, the star of the show, was drawn by lot for an IPO inspection.
Read article →In the space of a week, the West staged a robot orator and domestic acquisitions while China lined up the tonnage: AgiBot’s 10 000th unit and a G1 at 16 000 dollars. The narrative is American; the production curve is Chinese.
Read article →Three monetary facts in a single week — Unitree’s IPO accepted on 20 March, a unit price down 71.7% in the very same prospectus, RobotEra’s internationalised round closed on 23 March — together tell one sequence: China is floating the humanoid spectacle before it has a use for it.
Read article →Munich, GTC, China’s 15th Plan, a puppet-robot: six announcements that look juxtaposed in fact pose a single question, the one NEURA spells out in black and white — where does the data that trains robots come from? Three incompatible answers, and a single supplier underneath the stack.
Read article →In a single week, three converging announcements tip the humanoid narrative from the body to the brain. Tether leads NEURA’s round, Qualcomm puts its mobile chip in the robot, and Figure throws out 109,504 lines of code. Behind the word "record" hides a valuation halved.
Read article →While Wuhan and Honor filled the screens, the week’s real sequence institutionalised the sector’s governance: in China, the manufacturers are co-writing the standards that regulate them; state capital crosses the embodied-AI threshold for the first time; and Europe answers with private, closed governance.
Read article →On 23 February, AI² Robotics closed a Series B worth more than one billion yuan. But the money came from CRRC, a state-owned railway manufacturer, and from Baidu — the very firms that will deploy the robots. The funding round and the purchase order for 1,000 units are one and the same operation. At that same moment, in the West, Toyota Canada is leasing seven Digit units on a trial basis. Two market structures, not two speeds.
Read article →On 16 February, four Chinese manufacturers had their humanoids dance at the CCTV Gala. But the event of the week is not the choreography: it is its immediate conversion into purchase orders, into capital raised on both sides of the Pacific, and into an AgiBot subsidiary that pays humans in sensor harnesses to generate the data the robots lack.
Read article →In six days, three players that have nothing in common — Mobileye, Humanoid.ai, EngineAI — declared the same thing in three different ways: the humanoid body is worth nothing anymore, all the value has migrated to the software brain that drives it.
Read article →Between 27 January and 2 February, AgiBot, Unitree and Tesla put out three incompatible "world number one" rankings. After the rigged demo, the word that cracks and the loaded stage, it is now the hard metric — the delivery figure — that lies. And the one man with no figure at all is promising the biggest of them all.
Read article →Four Chinese humanoid-robot makers walk onto CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala. The press reads it as a coming-of-age moment for the sector. The cap table tells another story: the broadcaster owns part of its own cast.
Read article →In a single week, 1X, Skild, Humanoid-Siemens, Galbot and LimX all proclaimed autonomy. Behind the shared slogan, four incomparable realities: a research promise, a figure verified by a third party, a video and a closed loop.
Read article →Thirty-eight humanoids in Las Vegas, 55% of them from Chinese manufacturers. The coverage fixated on the backflips and the boxing bouts. What it missed: the spectacular teleoperation and the rock-bottom price are two sides of the same industrial shift — the sector has stopped selling robots and started selling data.
Read article →The opening ceremony of the GDPS 2025 featured lion dances and Tai Chi performed by Chinese humanoid robots. However, the choreography itself is the only format that makes it impossible to distinguish between autonomous operation and remote control. And what it obscures reveals more than it shows.
Read article →At less than half the price of its big brother, Unitree’s R1 looks like a bargain. But between an autonomy that has yet to be built and a platform launched at precisely the same moment to harvest data, the real business model isn’t the one you think.
Read article →AgiBot celebrated the rollout of its 5000th humanoid as proof of mass production. But the model chosen was an entertainment robot, and it was delivered to an actor’s studio. The manufacturing success masks a deficit: we know how to produce humanoids much faster than we know how to put them to work.
Read article →The Shanghai GDPS 2025 skills competition uses the same vocabulary as a rigorous evaluation process, including a panel of experienced professionals. However, it does not publish any scores, winners, or success rates. This is a system that resembles a competition, but lacks the typical features.
Read article →At the opening of GDPS 2025, a white-clad Unitree humanoid performed Tai Chi movements while an AgiBot robot danced the lion. A spectacle of intelligence? The summit itself provides the key that defuses the staging.
Read article →Unitree is presenting its new platform as the first "app store" for humanoid robots. However, behind this consumer-facing facade, its two real functions tell a completely different story.
Read article →The 1X company’s humanoid robot, the NEO, which is marketed as a "do-it-all" home assistant, is now being used in factories and warehouses. This is officially presented as a partnership, but in reality, it’s a strategic retreat.
Read article →While the star robots are running around in commercials or tripping in public, a non-charismatic humanoid has just secured a new client after already moving over 100,000 boxes in a warehouse. What if seriousness is measured by results, not by the spectacle?
Read article →In a few days in December 2025, Tesla showed its Optimus robot running in a slick video, then let it fall in public. Two images, one question: what is truly autonomous?
Read article →Midea presents MIRO U as a humanoid robot with six arms. However, it rolls instead of walking, and it has three pairs of arms – which contradicts the term "humanoid".
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