Unitree R1

Unitree R1 is the smallest and cheapest humanoid robot in Unitree Robotics' lineup. It stands roughly 121 cm tall and weighs about 25 kg, with 26 actuated joints across the legs, waist, arms and head. The base R1 Air model starts at US$4,900, with the standard R1 at US$5,900 and EDU configurations rising into the $10,000–$35,000 range depending on hand and compute options. Unitree markets the platform under the slogan "Born for Sports", with launch demos showing cartwheels, handstands, downhill running and rapid push-recovery.

The R1 was unveiled in late July 2025 via a one-minute YouTube reveal video. What sets it apart commercially happened nine months later, in April 2026, when Unitree began selling the robot worldwide through Alibaba's AliExpress marketplace — the first time a humanoid robot has been listed on a mainstream consumer e-commerce site. The international launch initially covers North America, Europe, Japan and Singapore, with US deliveries scheduled to begin around 30 June 2026.

Inside a backpack-mounted module sits an 8-core CPU and GPU running Unitree's UnifoLM multimodal large language model, which handles voice commands, gesture recognition and on-device reinforcement-learning policies without round-trips to the cloud. Sensors include a binocular camera, a four-microphone array, dual six-axis IMUs and onboard speakers. Battery life is roughly one hour, which is short by industrial standards but consistent with the robot's positioning as a research, education and prosumer platform rather than a continuous-duty worker.