Robotics Robotics

Unimate was an industrial robotic arm designed by George C. Devol and Joseph F. Engelberger and built by Unimation; in 1961 it became the first robot installed on an assembly line, unloading a die-casting press at a General Motors plant.

Shakey was a mobile robot built at SRI International between 1966 and 1972, the first AI-based mobile robot that could perceive and reason about its surroundings and act without step-by-step instructions. Its project produced the A* search algorithm and the STRIPS planning system.

Honda's P2, announced in December 1996, was presented as the world's first bipedal humanoid walking robot: a 1,820 mm, 210 kg machine that walked, climbed stairs and pushed carts without cables, and led to ASIMO.

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.

Sony's ERS-110, announced in May 1999, was the first AIBO: a four-legged autonomous entertainment robot that learned from interaction with its owner and expressed emotions.

ASIMO is a humanoid robot Honda announced in Tokyo on 20 November 2000, built to walk, climb stairs and work in human-sized spaces; successive versions ran faster and handled objects until its last regular demonstration in 2022.

Stanley is the Stanford University robotic vehicle that won DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge, completing a 132-mile desert course autonomously in 6 hours 53 minutes and claiming the $2 million prize.

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.

Tesla revealed a humanoid robot concept, later named Optimus, at its first AI Day on 19 August 2021, describing a person-sized machine meant to take on unwanted work, with a first physical version expected in 2022.

Figure 01 is the bipedal humanoid robot that startup Figure unveiled in March 2023, with design targets of 5 ft 6 in, 60 kg and a 20 kg payload, followed by a coffee-making demo and a BMW manufacturing agreement.

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.

An autonomous vacuum cleaning robot released by iRobot in 2002, Roomba created the consumer robot vacuum category and made its maker the market leader for years.

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.

Robonaut 2 is a humanoid robot built jointly by NASA and General Motors that flew to the International Space Station in 2011 to show how dexterous robots behave in orbit, and later gained legs to move around inside the station.

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.

Baxter was a two-armed robot unveiled by Rethink Robotics in September 2012, designed to work safely beside people on factory lines without safety cages and to be taught by hand, at a list price of $22,000.

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.

Unitree H1 is a full-size humanoid robot released by Unitree Robotics in August 2023. It stands about 180 cm tall, weighs about 47 kg, runs at up to 3.3 m/s and comes with a quick-swap battery pack.

AgiBot Yuanzheng A1 is a 175 cm, 55 kg humanoid robot unveiled by AgiBot on 18 August 2023, with 49 degrees of freedom, a 7 km/h walking speed, custom PowerFlow joint modules and the WorkGPT agent model as its software stack.

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.

UBTECH Walker S1 is an industrial humanoid robot released on 14 October 2024. Standing 172 cm and weighing 76 kg, it can walk while carrying a 15 kg payload and has been trialled in BYD and Audi FAW car plants.

IRON is XPENG's humanoid robot, first shown in November 2024 and redesigned a year later. It borrows the chip, vision system and AI models XPENG developed for its cars, and was trialled on a car production line.

UBTECH's second-generation industrial humanoid robot, launched in 2025, features a three-minute self-swap battery system and entered mass production and delivery the same year.

Tiangong Ultra is a 180 cm humanoid robot that won the 2025 Beijing Yizhuang humanoid half marathon, finishing 21.0975 km in 2 hours 40 minutes 42 seconds at an average of 7.88 km/h.

Unitree R1 is a small humanoid robot released by Unitree on 25 July 2025 at a starting price of 39,900 yuan, the company's third humanoid model and its lowest-priced one to date.

GR-3 is the third-generation robot in Fourier's GRx series and the company's first medical and elderly-care robot built around interactive companionship. It was shown at WAIC 2025 and launched in Beijing on 6 August 2025.

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.

Digit is Agility Robotics' human-centric, multi-purpose robot for logistics work. It moves and handles totes in warehouses, including repetitive tote recycling for Amazon and conveyor feeding at a GXO facility.

Galbot G1 is a wheeled humanoid robot: 1,730 mm tall, 21 degrees of freedom, swappable hand, suction cup or gripper, an onboard NVIDIA AGX Orin computer, and, the company says, deployments in unmanned retail cabins at over 170 sites.

A four-wheeled planetary rover prototype built at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute with NASA funding, Nomad tested autonomous driving and rock analysis in Antarctica, hunting meteorites on the ice without step-by-step human control.

PackBot is iRobot's tactical mobile robot, developed under a 1998 DARPA contract. It carried out search work at the World Trade Center site in 2001 and was first deployed by the US military in 2002.

Honda's P1 was the first humanoid in Honda's P series, built during 1993–1997 research. Standing 1,915 mm and weighing 175 kg, it combined bipedal legs with a torso and arms, running on external power and an external computer.

Honda's P3, completed in September 1997, is a completely independent bipedal humanoid walking robot, 1,600 mm tall and 130 kg; Honda later called ASIMO its further evolved version.

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.

EVE is a wheeled humanoid robot released by Halodi Robotics, later 1X, in 2018 for logistics, security and medical work. It later became the company's testbed for learning autonomous manipulation from video and teleoperation.

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.

CyberOne, nicknamed Tieda, is a full-size humanoid bionic robot that Xiaomi presented in August 2022. It showed the company assembling perception, control and actuation into one machine, but it had not entered mass production.

The Fourier GR-1 is Fourier's first full-size humanoid robot, released in 2023 and mass-produced the same year. It is aimed at guided reception and consulting work and at academic research.

Fourier's second-generation general-purpose humanoid robot, released and put into mass production in 2024. It follows the GR-1 and is used for guided reception, consulting and academic research.

NEO Beta is a bipedal humanoid prototype that 1X unveiled on 30 August 2024 for home use. The company presented it as a step from concept development toward limited in-home testing and production planning.

NEO Gamma is 1X's home humanoid robot, introduced in February 2025 with a learned whole-body controller that gives it a human-like gait; it was used for early household testing before the company's NEO robot succeeded it.

Galbot S1 is a heavy-load embodied robot for industrial, warehousing and logistics work, with two arms carrying up to 50 kg, a reach from the floor to 2.3 m shelves, and hot-swappable batteries for round-the-clock operation.