{"id":145748,"date":"2026-08-20T05:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T05:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/145748\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T05:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T05:13:09","slug":"just-how-useful-are-human-looking-robots-very-unitree-robotics-investors-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/145748\/","title":{"rendered":"Just How Useful Are Human-Looking Robots? Very, Unitree Robotics Investors Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unitree Robotics\u2019 humanoid robots may give M3GAN<\/a> a run for her money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Hangzhou-based company\u2019s product lineup includes bipedal bots that can do backflips, kung fu and more moves that plenty of humans (and their knees) can only dream of. The \u201cSuperman,\u201d which the company previewed this week<\/a>, can jump 2 meters and run up to 12.66 meters per second.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the robots have certainly captured the attention of the internet, they\u2019re exciting investors, too. Unitree raised roughly 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) in its initial public offering, which was oversubscribed more than 8,000 times<\/a> by retail investors, and shares skyrocketed 460% when the firm debuted on the Shanghai market Wednesday.<\/p>\n

C-3PO\u2019s Use Case\u00a0<\/p>\n

Investor fervor around an IPO doesn\u2019t necessarily translate to a business model that can keep appealing to investors; just ask Beyond Meat or Peloton. Unitree\u2019s powerful market debut does beg the question of whether the humanoid robots will be key players in making AI advancements more useful to humans, or simply theatrics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHumanoids are probably more like swapping steam engines for electric motors than redesigning the factory floor,\u201d Amelia Michael, a non-resident fellow at the think tank Foundation for American Innovation and a research scholar at GovAI, recently wrote<\/a>. As in, the result would be only minor productivity improvements. \u201cIt would be surprising if the human form factor is optimal for most tasks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean companies aren\u2019t releasing them, hoping they change the way we live and work:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Boston Dynamics\u2019 humanoid Atlas is built in part for industrial work and material handling. The firm also has the four-legged dynamic sensing bot Spot, which it says can offer insight into potentially hazardous situations.<\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s Optimus is a general-purpose humanoid that the company says can perform \u201cunsafe, repetitive or boring tasks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Droids You\u2019re Looking For Are From China: Unitree\u2019s home country is also the robotics supply chain leader. It\u2019s now almost impossible to build a humanoid robot without parts from Chinese companies, Ming Hsun Lee, the head of greater China industrials at BofA Global Research, told The New York Times<\/a>. \u201cThe component cost in China has gone down way too fast,\u201d he added. \u201cOther countries can\u2019t compete.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unitree Robotics\u2019 humanoid robots may give M3GAN a run for her money.\u00a0 The Hangzhou-based company\u2019s product lineup includes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,387,1817,3045,2616],"class_list":["post-145748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-china","tag-manufacturing","tag-robots","tag-tesla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}