You can now buy your own humanoid robot for under 20 grand. The 4-foot-tall Unitree G1 is Unitree’s latest attempt to cash in on the robot craze by offering consumers a chance to bring home one of the “latest” mechanical innovations of our time for a modest $16,000.
If you’ve never heard of Unitree, it’s essentially a budget option for robotics. The company has made a habit of releasing “consumer-grade” robots that anyone can buy if they have the cash for it. Unitree calls the G1 a “humanoid agent AI avatar,” which sounds honestly ridiculous now that I’m actually writing it out.
The G1 can stand up on its own from the ground, making it eerily similar to the Atlas, another humanoid robot by Boston Dynamics. The walk is a bit more primitive than what we’ve seen from the Atlas and other “higher-end” robots from other companies, but considering the asking price is just $16,000 to buy your own robot, it’s probably a pretty cool party gig for anyone with the cash to blow.
Whether or not the Unitree G1 actually proves useful for anything after you purchase it is another question entirely. It’s only four feet tall, making it a bit short for any home-cleaning work. IT also only has a 9,000 mAh battery. Sure, that might sound huge, especially compared to smartphone battery sizes, but it actually only gets you around two hours of usage before you’ll need to plug your robot pal back in.
The robot utilizes an Intel RealSense D435 depth camera, and a Livox-MID360 lidar puck, allowing it to move around and understand the space around it. Unitree says the G1 can run up to 4.4 miles per hour, and its “arm maximum load” isj just around 4.4 pounds. Not exactly a heavy lifter. Though, I imagine if you’re dropping $16K to buy you own robot, you probably don’t actually intend to put it to work carrying you stuff around.
Most of the promotional material in the announcement video showcases someone kicking and punching the robot, which can manage to keep its balance pretty well, I guess. It’s pretty awful at cracking nuts, though, with the shell and nut inside just flying everywhere in the process.
At $16,000, there’s really not a lot of reason to buy your own robot. But, I guess if you really just want the bragging rights, or to show off your purchase to your friends, then you can always pick one up and have it open cokes by spilling them all over your kitchen floor. Not interested in a four-foot-tall humanoid avatar? You can also buy a flamethrowing robot dog for under $10K.