AgiBot Yuanzheng A1

What it is

AgiBot Yuanzheng A1 (also written RAISE A1) is a humanoid robot that AgiBot unveiled on 18 August 2023.^[1][3] It stands 175 cm tall and weighs 55 kg, close to the build of an adult person.^[1][2] Its maximum walking speed is 7 km/h, faster than an easy stroll and close to a brisk walk.^[1][2]

How the body is built

AgiBot lists 49 degrees of freedom across the machine.^[1][2] A degree of freedom is one independently driven axis of motion: a joint that can be commanded on its own. Humanoid designs spread these across arms, legs, torso and head so that the robot can balance, gesture and handle objects. More degrees of freedom usually mean more dexterity, but also more motors, more weight and a harder control problem.

The company gave two payload figures: a whole-machine load capacity of 80 kg and a maximum single-arm payload of 5 kg.^[1][2] The first describes how much weight the legs and body can carry while standing or walking; the second describes how much one arm can hold and move.

The joints are built around a module AgiBot calls PowerFlow.^[2] It uses a quasi-direct-drive design with a planetary reducer of under 10:1 ratio, dual encoders and liquid cooling, and it delivers peak torque above 350 N·m at 1.6 kg.^[2]

Quasi-direct drive means the motor is paired with a low-ratio gearbox rather than the high-ratio gearing often used in robot joints. A low ratio keeps the joint easier to back-drive, so the robot can feel an outside force and yield to it instead of moving like a stiff mechanism; the trade-off is that the motor itself has to produce more torque. Two encoders, typically one at the motor and one at the joint output, let the controller know both where the motor has turned and what angle the joint has actually reached. Liquid cooling carries heat out of a package that is small and works hard. Joints have to produce large forces repeatedly inside a small volume, so heat removal and measurement accuracy tend to be the limiting factors, which is why a module like this considers reduction ratio, encoders and cooling together.

Software

First Financial Weekly reported that the A1 ran on WorkGPT, an agent model that combines a language model, a vision control model, and models for body control and perception.^[3] In that arrangement the language model handles instructions and the ordering of steps, the vision control model interprets what the robot sees, and the body-control and perception models turn decisions into movement.

Cost

AgiBot said it planned to keep the robot's hardware cost under 200,000 yuan.^[2] Humanoid robots have usually been built in tiny numbers from custom parts, which makes them expensive; stating a cost target describes the machine as something meant to be manufactured and sold rather than only demonstrated.

Where it sits

The A1 is a full-size bipedal robot announced together with a model-based software stack and a hardware cost target. The body specifications say how large the machine is and what it can do, the software says how it is meant to understand instructions, and the cost target says what it is meant to cost to build.