Chinese company Ubtech Robotics has announced that it has begun mass production of its Walker S2 humanoid robot
Parallel to the enormous challenge between Western car manufacturers and Chinese brands, which has been talked about so much in recent years, there is another much less known, but equally important and related to the first one: that between American robot manufacturers And Chinese manufacturers. Humanoid robots which, among the many tasks they are called upon to carry out, also have work in automotive factories. The American company Figure AI announced, a few days ago, the end of the first working tests of its robots Figures 02 in the BMW factory in Spartanburg, while the Chinese Ubtech Robotics almost simultaneously announced the start of mass production of thousands of robots Walker S2destined for factories automotive in the land of the dragon.
AN ARMY OF ROBOT WORKERS
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The humanoid robot Walker S2 has officially entered the production phase mass productionwith 500 examples expected by the end of 2025, another 5,000 robots to be produced in 2026 and more 10,000 scheduled for 2027. The announcement was made with a fairly impressive, if not entirely credible, video. A great commercial, in short, but we know that many startups first lie and promise the moon, and then realize at least part of what they promised. Ubtech claims to have signed, only in 2025, contracts for 112 million dollars and to have already started collaborations with large industrial players, in particular in the automotive sector: BYD, Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor, Geely Auto, Faw-Volkswagen Qingdao, Audi Faw, Baic New Energy, Foxconn. The Walker S2 robot, the one in the video, would have already entered different automotive assembly lines, for “accumulate vast experience based on real data and frontline operations“.
WHAT WALKER S2 CAN DO
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Walker S2 he is a humanoid robot 176 centimeters tall, weighing 70 kilos. Ha 52 degrees of freedom11 of which are in the five-fingered hand, and can walk at a speed of 7 kilometers per hour. It can carry and move loads up to 15 kilos (7.5 kilos per hand, one kilo with a single finger). His peculiar characteristic, as well as the one that most of all makes him eligible for factory work, is the possibility of independently carrying out the battery change: he approaches a charging station, takes the battery pack off his back, puts it to charge and takes and mounts a charged one. This way Walker S2 can work almost 24 hours a day And 7/7 almost never stoppingif not for a few minutes. A dream for Chinese factory managers.
WHAT POINT ARE WE REALLY AT?
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The advanced robotics companies that are developing humanoid robots are almost all startupsstrictly at a loss for hundreds of millions of dollars, still far from the realization of a ready product for the mass market. Like all startups, Ubtech, Figure AI, Apptronik, Agility Robotics, Unitree Robotics, 1X Technologies, Xpeng, also carry forward the well-known philosophy of “fake it, till you make it” (fake it, until you make it). Not even the big consolidated companies, such as Xiaomi or Tesla, behave very differently. This means that we’re not there yet to the historical moment in which a robot can substitute effectively and reliably a human worker inside a car factory. But it also means that we are not yet, but we will be one day. Given the very fast pace at which the development of these technologies is advancing, and the mountain of money that companies are investing in humanoid robots, it is reasonable to think that human workers will have no real competition for at least about ten years Still. By the middle of the next decade, though, it actually might start the replacement: at least part of the workers who leave their jobs, due to retirement or dismissal (voluntary or forced), will be replaced by humanoid robots.
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