Hardware & compute Robotics

A small NASA rover that landed on Mars on July 4, 1997 with the Mars Pathfinder lander and became the first wheeled vehicle operated on another planet.

Atlas was a humanoid disaster-response robot built by Boston Dynamics for DARPA, unveiled on 11 July 2013 and handed to teams in the DARPA Robotics Challenge; its hydraulic line was retired in 2024.

Spot is Boston Dynamics' four-legged commercial robot, sold since September 2019 for industrial use. It carries modular payloads such as cameras and LIDAR, walks over steps and slopes, and more than 1,500 units are in customers' hands.

Boston Dynamics unveiled a fully electric Atlas in April 2024, saying it would be stronger, more dexterous and quieter than earlier generations and calling it the start of the robot's commercial journey, with Hyundai as first partner.

Figure 02 is the humanoid robot Figure introduced in August 2024, with redesigned hardware, 16-degree-of-freedom hands and triple the onboard compute of Figure 01. It loaded sheet-metal parts at BMW's Spartanburg plant before being retired in favour of Figure 03.

Figure 03 is Figure's third-generation humanoid robot, announced in October 2025. It is designed around the company's Helix AI for home tasks and mass manufacturing, with a new camera system, tactile hands and wireless charging.

NEO is a humanoid robot announced by 1X on 28 October 2025 and marketed as the first consumer-ready humanoid: a 66-pound, softly built machine with 22 degrees of freedom per hand, priced at US$20,000 for Early Access or US$499 a month by subscription.

BigDog is a four-legged robot built by Boston Dynamics with DARPA funding, designed as a robotic pack mule that could carry loads over terrain too rough for conventional vehicles.

Curiosity is NASA's Mars rover, which landed in Gale Crater in August 2012 carrying a science payload far larger than earlier rovers, and which used a sky-crane descent to set down on its wheels.

Boston Dynamics' 2016 generation of the Atlas humanoid, called Atlas HD or hydraulic Atlas: smaller, lighter and more agile than earlier versions, electrically powered and hydraulically actuated, and retired in 2024.

Stretch is Boston Dynamics' first commercial robot designed specifically for warehouses, unveiled in March 2021 to unload trucks and, in later plans, to build orders.

A four-legged consumer robot launched by Unitree in June 2021, the Go1 cost about 16,000 yuan and ran at up to 4.7 metres per second — an early attempt to sell a legged robot to ordinary buyers.

Optimus is Tesla's humanoid robot; its first prototype appeared at the company's second AI Day in September 2022, about 172 cm tall and 73 kg, with a 2.3 kWh battery pack and more than 200 degrees of freedom.

Phoenix is Sanctuary AI's sixth-generation humanoid general-purpose robot, unveiled in May 2023 and controlled by the company's Carbon AI system.

Unitree Go2 is a quadruped robot released in July 2023 at a starting price of 9,997 yuan, which Unitree said brought pricing in this category below 10,000 yuan for the first time.

Apollo is Apptronik's humanoid robot, unveiled in August 2023: a 1.72 m electric machine with a 55-pound payload and swappable four-hour batteries, aimed first at warehouse and factory work.

Tesla's second-generation humanoid robot, shown in a December 2023 video walking, dancing and handling an egg, with 30% faster walking, 10 kg less weight and 11-DoF hands.[^1][^2]

A humanoid robot announced by Unitree Robotics on 13 May 2024 with a starting price of 99,000 yuan. The G1 weighs about 35 kg, folds for transport, and comes in a standard version and a configurable EDU version.

Unitree H2 is a bionic humanoid robot announced on 20 October 2025, with a face-like head, 31 degrees of freedom, a weight of about 70 kg and a list price of 199,000 yuan.

Boston Dynamics and Hyundai Motor Group unveiled a production-ready Atlas humanoid in January 2026, with deployments planned at Hyundai and Google DeepMind and a fleet trained using reinforcement learning and foundation models.

Handle was a Boston Dynamics research robot that balanced on two wheels and used Atlas-derived arms to move objects; the company credits it with truck unloading and pallet building, and says the work led to its warehouse robot Stretch.

Xiaomi CyberDog is a bionic quadruped robot that Xiaomi announced in August 2021. It was sold as an engineering exploration edition priced at 9,999 yuan and limited to 1,000 units, and was aimed at developers who wanted to program and extend it.