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What just happened? Elon Musk says he has long envisioned a world in which every household would have a humanoid robotic assistant. However, the price of these machines is one of many factors that prevent this scenario from becoming reality. Unitree’s new R1 has lowered the entry cost into this sci-fi universe.
Unitree Robotics’ R1 is a four-foot tall robot with 26 joints and weighing around 55 pounds.
The R1 is able to perform impressive acrobatics, much like the humanoid robotics of Boston Dynamics. The video of the company shows it doing handstands and cartwheels. It is also quite good at boxing, martial arts and dancing (a favorite pastime of Boston Dynamics’ robots). It can also run or at least jog.
Consumer robots such as the R1 are usually expensive, but the R1 is only $5,900. Comparatively, Unitree G1 is a cheaper model at $16,000 while H1 is $90,000. Figure AI offers the Figure 02 for a little over $30,000.
R1 is capable of more than just physical tricks. It has binocular vision, voice and image recognition capabilities powered by LLM. It has integrated Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and Bluetooth 5.2 compatibility.
Although the video only shows R1’s agility the robot can respond to voice commands, and hold basic conversation. The message at the bottom of the clip says: “Movement first, tasks as well (A diversity of movement is the foundation for completing tasks).”
This video promises that buyers will be able to customize their robots as well. Unitree seems to be a fan of the 2011 movie Real Steel. The company held a humanoid robotic combat competition. It looks more like two metal children flailing their arms at each other.
Unitree Combat Competition Highlights May 25, 2025
A historic moment in human history: The first-ever humanoid robot combat competition(Livestream)
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pic.twitter.com/Aan2h7RFI0“The humanoid robot has a complex structure and extremely powerful power. Users are asked to keep a sufficient safe distance between the humanoid robot and the humanoid robot. Please use with caution.”
The second part of this warning reminds me of an incident that occurred in May. A video circulated on social networks that appeared to show Unitree’s H1 robot going crazy on a factory floor and almost injuring employees.
Although the R1 is a far cry from the Detroit: Be Human-style home assistant robots, its price of under $6,000 shows how much cheaper the technology is becoming. This could lead to more sophisticated, mass produced models sooner that we predicted.
