Unitree G1 Humanoid Robot Review: Price, Teardown, and Why Automakers Are Investing
Key takeaways
- Automakers are betting billions on humanoid robots.
- You can now buy your own humanoid robot and make your own videos of it doing backflips and such.
- Why should Motor Trend (and you, the car-enthusiast) care anything at all about robots?
Why this matters: an automotive development that could shape industry direction or buying decisions.
Automakers are betting billions on humanoid robots. We explain why that matters long before Rosie the Robot lands at home.
You can now buy your own humanoid robot and make your own videos of it doing backflips and such. Chinese startup Uni Tree was founded in 2016 by Wang Xingxing, who’d built a quadruped robot called XDog as his master’s thesis at Shanghai University. It made such a splash that he quit a job at drone-maker DJI and founded Uni Tree to perfect quadruped robots.
Why should Motor Trend (and you, the car-enthusiast) care anything at all about robots? Up to now, cars have typically been the second priciest product Americans buy. They’re expensive, practical, alluring, and sometimes dangerous. Robots have many of those attributes in common, and lots of car companies are investing millions in building humanoid robots.