For less than the price of a fully decked-out MacBook Pro, you can buy Unitree's latest humanoid robot called the R1. You only have to shell out $5,900 for a robot that weighs around 55 lbs, stands about four feet tall, and is built with a Large Multimodal Model to handle complex tasks.
If you're wondering what the R1 will be used for, your guess is as good as ours. Unitree said its robot is "fully customizable" and demoed its capabilities in a video showing off cartwheels, handstands, boxing, roundhouse kicks and running downhill, but didn't offer examples with any practical use yet. The lightweight robot has an ultra-wide view and a four-microphone array to help it recognize voices and images, but was also built with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity. It's not hard to envision a world where people program the R1 as a robot butler to handle daily chores, much like what Meta is reportedly working on. However, you might even be able to square up two R1s to fight each other, as evidenced by Unitree promoting a unique fighting tournament that felt like a less aesthetically polished version of 2011's Real Steel.
The latest R1 is a much lower entry point than Unitree's previous humanoid robot, the G1, which starts at $16,000 and was demoed at CES 2025 with somewhat disastrous results. Even though the R1's sub-$6,000 price tag is arguably high, it's still much cheaper compared to other similar options, like Tesla's Optimus bot that's expected to go for at least $20,000.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/this-humanoid-robot-can-do-cartwheels-handstands-and-roundhouse-kicks-at-less-than-6000-184500276.html?src=rss
