Unitree Go1

What the Go1 is

The Go1 is a four-legged robot — a quadruped — that walks and runs on legs rather than wheels. The Chinese robotics company Unitree launched it in June 2021.^[1][3] What made it notable was less the walking than the price and the audience: Unitree sold it as a consumer product and described it as the first companion bionic robot, a machine meant to accompany a person rather than to work in a factory or a research lab.^[2]

Where it came from

Unitree was founded in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in 2016 by Wang Xingxing, who had built a robot dog called XDog during his postgraduate study.^[1] That origin explains a good deal about the Go1: the company grew out of a student legged-robot project, and the Go1 was its step from small numbers of technical buyers towards ordinary customers.

Legs are a harder engineering problem than wheels. A wheeled machine stays upright as long as the ground is flat enough; a legged one has to know where its feet are and correct its balance many times a second, and every joint that makes this possible adds weight and cost. That is part of why legged robots were for a long time specialised, expensive equipment. A consumer version has to bring weight, price and robustness down at the same time.

What it does

Unitree's lowest-configuration Go1 was priced at 16,000 yuan when it went on sale in June 2021.^[2] China Daily reported the same price, about 16,000 yuan (roughly US$2,512), and a top running speed of 4.7 metres per second.^[1] Unitree marketing manager Chen Xiyun was quoted giving those same two figures: a cost of about 16,000 yuan and a running speed of 4.7 metres per second.^[1]

The rest of the specification follows the same idea of a machine that lives alongside a person. It weighs 12 kg and folds down to 0.588 by 0.29 by 0.22 metres, so it can be put away when it is not in use.^[2] It can carry 3 to 5 kg, enough for a few small items rather than a load.^[2] It has vision cameras on its sides that help it avoid obstacles in real environments, so it does not rely on a prepared, empty floor.^[2] Unitree also said the Go1 could follow a person without that person needing to keep looking back — which is the point of the companion framing, since a robot you have to watch is not much of a walking companion.^[2]

How it sold, and where it sits

According to an article from the Zhejiang provincial united front department, the Go1 sold nearly 1,000 units in its first year, and the same article describes it as Unitree's first attempt at the mass consumer market.^[3]

Nearly a thousand units is a small number next to consumer electronics and a large one for a legged robot, and it is the combination of price, sales and framing that makes the Go1 a marker: a quadruped priced at 16,000 yuan and sold by the thousand is a different kind of object from a piece of laboratory equipment. Buyers who would never have ordered a research platform could consider this one.

The published figures also mark the limits. A 12 kg body with a 3 to 5 kg payload belongs to the class of machines that carry a few things for you, not the class that moves furniture or does heavy work; obstacle avoidance from side cameras helps on a street or in a park, but it is a long way from the reliability demanded in a factory or on a construction site. The Go1 is best understood as the point where a legged robot became something an individual could buy, rather than as a machine that replaced the industrial versions.