Unitree released the H2, and Ubtech won orders. Humanoid robots are moving towards pragmatism.

From the laboratory to the production line, and from exhibition pieces to commercial orders, humanoid robots are accelerating towards reality with the power of Chinese manufacturing.

In the second half of this year, the humanoid robot field has been surging with enthusiasm. Ubtech Robotics has successively won industrial orders worth hundreds of millions of yuan, and Unitree Robotics has released its new H2 humanoid robot. The capital market has shown great enthusiasm for this.

With the multiple boosts of technological breakthroughs, policy support, and market recognition, this "future industry" is moving towards large - scale commercial implementation at a speed exceeding expectations. Chinese humanoid robot enterprises are running their own "Chinese paradigm" on the global stage with their in - depth understanding of scenarios and practical product strategies.

Robot Re - evolution: Deep Integration of Bipedal Walking and AI Brain

At present, humanoid robots are experiencing a crucial technological leap from "being able to move" to "being useful". The deep integration of motion control and AI intelligence has become the core engine driving this transformation.

At the beginning of October, at the IROS 2025 venue in Hangzhou, Ubtech's Walker S2 demonstrated amazing environmental adaptability. It is reported that the Walker S2 has 52 degrees of freedom, can handle a 15 - kilogram load within a full - space range of 0 - 1.8 meters, and can achieve a flexible waist rotation of ±162°.

What's even more amazing is its hot - swappable self - charging system, which can complete energy replenishment in just 3 minutes, supporting 7×24 - hour continuous operation and redefining the working paradigm of industrial humanoid robots.

The breakthrough in visual perception ability is also remarkable. The paper "The Sampling - Gaussian for Stereo Matching" presented by Ubtech Research Institute at IROS 2025 proposed an innovative binocular depth estimation method.

This method constructs a supervision signal through Gaussian probability sampling, enabling the robot to generate high - precision dense depth maps in real - time from binocular RGB images, giving it a stereo visual perception ability comparable to that of the "human eye".

Meanwhile, Unitree Robotics has continued its traditional advantages in the field of motion control. The newly released H2 humanoid robot shows extremely strong balance and agility.

Image source: Official Weibo

The previously released G1, about 132 centimeters tall and weighing 35 kilograms, with a retail price starting from 99,000 yuan, is also the "world's best - selling robot" in the past year; the R1, released this year with a price starting from 39,900 yuan, has attracted wide market attention due to its high cost - effectiveness.

It can be seen that Unitree is providing customers with some technologies closer to the ultimate form in an optional way through a high - cost - performance technical route, significantly reducing costs while ensuring performance.

In terms of "brain" integration, Ubtech's self - developed multi - modal large - model Thinker, based on a base of tens of billions of parameters, systematically improves the multi - modal perception, reasoning, and planning abilities of humanoid robots, becoming the "most powerful brain" of the Walker S series in dynamic industrial scenarios.

In May this year, Ubtech and Huawei signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement in Shenzhen. According to the agreement, Huawei will leverage its technological advantages in Ascend AI, Kunpeng computing, Huawei Cloud, and large - models, combined with Ubtech's full - stack humanoid robot technology, to accelerate the commercial application of humanoid robots in industrial, household, and other scenarios.

As humanoid robots have made breakthroughs in core technology fields such as motion control, environmental perception, and AI decision - making, these technological breakthroughs are rapidly being transformed into real commercial value.

The precise operation and long - lasting battery life of Ubtech's Walker S2 and the high - cost - performance solutions of Unitree Robotics' H1 and R1 series have jointly paved the way for the large - scale application of humanoid robots.

From the Exhibition Booth to Application: Commercial Implementation Starts to "Break the Ice"

When robots are no longer just exhibition pieces in the laboratory and can stably perform complex tasks in real - world work scenarios, the focus of industrial development naturally shifts from "technical verification" to "commercial verification".

The improvement in technological maturity has enabled the capital market and end - users to build sufficient confidence in this emerging category. A commercial ice - breaking journey from demonstration to large - scale application is accelerating.

According to statistics from Tianyancha, Unitree Robotics has won bids for 25 public procurement projects so far this year, approaching the total of 32 winning bids in the whole year of 2024.

Image source: Ubtech official

Judging from the background of the purchasers, the application scenarios are extending from university research to the industrial field. In the first half of 2025, educational and research institutions such as universities, research institutes, and vocational colleges were still the largest purchasing group for humanoid robots.

In the second half of the year, the humanoid robots on the current market are gradually transitioning to real - world commercial service and industrial scenarios.

According to Tan Min, the Chief Brand Officer of Ubtech, Ubtech's goal this year is to deliver hundreds of humanoid robots, including 500 industrial humanoid robots.

In addition, delivery capacity has become another important indicator to test the strength of enterprises. On October 18, Wang Chuang, a partner of Zhiyuan Robotics, said that about 1,000 units of the Zhiyuan Expedition series have been shipped this year, and the scale is expected to reach several thousand units next year.

According to a research report from Kaiyuan Securities, Unitree Robotics shipped about 1,400 humanoid robots in 2024, making it the company with the highest humanoid robot shipments globally at present.

While accelerating their own technological breakthroughs and commercial implementation, leading humanoid robot enterprises are consolidating the foundation for the long - term development of the industry by building ecological alliances and promoting standard setting.

Progress has also been made in the construction of the developer ecosystem. In recent years, Unitree Robotics has provided full - link secondary development support by opening up underlying resources, designing hardware scalability, and building a developer ecosystem to meet the needs of customers such as scientific research and educational institutions and accelerate commercialization.

Ubtech, in collaboration with the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, has launched the "Tianguang Xingzhe Developer Toolchain System", helping developers efficiently achieve closed - loop development from creative concepts to physical applications in accordance with the standardized process of "resource acquisition → environment setup → algorithm development → simulation verification → physical machine deployment".

In summary, these successive large - scale orders, the steadily increasing delivery capacity, and the gradually maturing core technologies together constitute the most powerful proof of the ice - breaking journey of the humanoid robot industry.

The Road from Difficult Implementation to a Trillion - Dollar Blue Ocean

From Ubtech's hundreds - of - millions - yuan orders in industrial scenarios, to Unitree Robotics' leading position in quantity, and to Zhiyuan Robotics' plan to ship thousands of units, leading enterprises are pushing the industry from the "concept stage" to the "revenue stage" with real performance.

However, breaking the ice in commercial implementation is just the first step of a long march. How to overcome multiple obstacles such as cost, fragmented scenarios, and technological synergy, achieve the leap from "being useful" to "being good and affordable to use", and finally enter the recognized trillion - dollar blue ocean is a more important issue for all participants.

The balance between cost and profit, as the primary problem faced by the industry, has begun to change. Although from the overall market situation, university purchases account for a relatively high proportion of humanoid robot orders and are mostly used for scientific research verification and teaching demonstrations.

However, the large - scale orders of leading enterprises are now pointing a new direction for the industry's development. Large - scale orders are expected to promote large - scale production, thus achieving a balance between cost and profit.

In July, Ubtech won a 90.5115 - million - yuan robot equipment procurement project from Miyee Automobile, setting a new record for the highest single - order winning amount of a global humanoid robot enterprise; in October, Ubtech received good news again, winning humanoid robot procurement orders worth 32 million yuan and 126 million yuan successively, and the total annual order amount has been steadily increasing.

Image source: Pixabay image library

In the past, the limitation of application scenarios also restricted the industry's development. According to relevant data statistics, in 2024, 72% of the globally deployed humanoid robots were used for university research, 15% for commercial performances, and only 13% entered practical scenarios such as industry and services.

The over - concentration in the two scenarios of high - efficiency research and commercial performances is essentially the result of a mismatch between technological maturity and industrial needs.

Now, Ubtech's humanoid robots have reached 30% of the work efficiency of a human in industrial scenarios, and are expected to exceed 50% in early 2026 and break through 80% by the end of 2027.

Progress has also been made in solving the problem of insufficient technological synergy. In the past, although the performance of individual modules of humanoid robots was outstanding, the lack of adaptation between modules would lead to a discount in overall performance.

This year, Ubtech innovatively proposed a software architecture for the swarm - brain network of humanoid robots and designed a humanoid intelligent networking center, overcoming the problems of collaborative decision - making and control in complex industrial scenarios. It can be seen that group intelligence technology has become a key breakthrough point for the implementation of humanoid robots in industrial scenarios.

As enterprises such as Ubtech and Unitree Robotics continue to deepen their presence in industrial scenarios and gradually explore household scenarios, humanoid robots are moving from science fiction to reality, from the laboratory to industrialization, and a Chinese humanoid robot paradigm is emerging on the global stage.

The future victory will no longer depend on who is more human - like, but on who can better solve "human problems".

This article is from the WeChat official account "Hong Kong Stock Research Society" (ID: ganggushe), author: Turkish Hot Air Balloon. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.