Unitree Launches R1, a More Accessible Humanoid Robot
Unitree’s R1 humanoid robot has gymnastic skills that will put you to shame, and its $5,900 price makes robotics more accessible than ever.
The sort of quantum leaps in technological progress that have driven down costs and improved accessibility in areas like computing and artificial intelligence have not arrived in robotics to anywhere near the same extent. Today, we are still mainly left with either inexpensive robots that are not much use beyond being a toy, or very capable robots that are so expensive you already know that you cannot afford them before checking the price tag.
Humanoid robots are unquestionably the coolest and most versatile robots around, but they are also some of the most inaccessible. They have very complex mechanical designs, and the sensing equipment and advanced algorithms that keep them from stumbling around drive the prices up to a “contact sales for a quote” level. The tide may finally be turning, however. Unitree has just released a new humanoid robot model called the R1. It may not qualify as cheap, but in the world of robotics, its $5,900 cost is little more than pocket change.
This four-foot-tall, 55 pound robot can fluidly jump, dance, kick, do handstands, and generally put you to shame with its superhuman gymnastics skills. It comes equipped with a binocular camera and an array of four microphones to sense the world around it. An onboard computer with an 8-core CPU and a GPU allows powerful machine learning algorithms to run onboard. A built-in speaker can be used to enhance human-machine interactions with the R1.
The athletic abilities of R1 come from a slick mechanical design and a bevy of actuators. The R1 sports three shoulder joints and two elbow joints. Each leg has six-degrees-of-freedom, and the waist can also move on two axes. In total, the robot has 26-degrees-of-freedom in its movements. With all of this onboard equipment, the battery only lasts about an hour, but it does have a quick release mechanism so that it can be swapped out rapidly.
At $5,900, this Hobbit-sized robot is not likely to be finding a place in very many hobbyist weekend projects, but it is still a very big step forward. Perhaps an R3 or R4 will emerge in the years to come that will finally give us all the option to own an impressively-capable humanoid robot.