Unitree Launches GD01, Its First Giant Transforming Bipedal Robot

Unitree revealed its GD01 giant walking crawling transforming wall-smashing mecha on Tuesday, the Chinese company's first foray into giant mechas. An introductory video for the GD01 shows founder and CEO Xingxing Wang holding hands with the robot before climbing into its open-air belly.

The video then cuts to a view in which the GD01 has no human pilot on board but still manages to smash a wall of cinder blocks.

The GD01 is a red-limbed robot that can contort itself by bending backwards and crawling on its hands and legs. In this crabwalk position the human operator would be lying on their back looking at the ceiling or sky. Unitree is a Chinese company based in Hangzhou.

The company makes the world’s most popular four-legged and humanoid robots. Its G1 humanoids perform dancing, acrobatics and kung-fu in social media clips. The cheapest G1 model costs around $15,000.

US-made humanoid robots can cost 10 times more than Unitree’s cheapest G1. Unitree confirmed to WIRED that the GD01 is an actual product it is selling. Unitree’s robots performed parkour and synchronized martial arts at a televised spring festival event a few months ago.

These routines involved a new trick of having numerous robots communicate with each other wirelessly in order to tightly synchronize their movements. Unitree’s robots are either remotely controlled or allowed to perform relatively simple actions autonomously. Unitree’s humanoids are not particularly dextrous and lack the AI needed to perform complex tasks in messy real-world environments.

The GD01 looks more geared towards destruction and garnering publicity for Unitree than anything else. Unitree is expected to go public this year. Wired reported that the company has been successful in part because its robots are remarkably inexpensive and its hardware is easy for researchers to configure and deploy AI programs on.

Its mastery of China’s vast and complex hardware supply chain has helped it gain an edge in building robots cheaply. The GD01 appears aimed at publicity more than practical application.