Just How Useful Are Human-Looking Robots? Very, Unitree Robotics Investors Hope
Shares of the Chinese robotics company skyrocketed 460% when it debuted on Shanghai’s STAR market on Wednesday.
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Unitree Robotics’ humanoid robots may give M3GAN a run for her money.
The Hangzhou-based company’s product lineup includes bipedal bots that can do backflips, kung fu and more moves that plenty of humans (and their knees) can only dream of. The “Superman,” which the company previewed this week, can jump 2 meters and run up to 12.66 meters per second.
While the robots have certainly captured the attention of the internet, they’re exciting investors, too. Unitree raised roughly 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) in its initial public offering, which was oversubscribed more than 8,000 times by retail investors, and shares skyrocketed 460% when the firm debuted on the Shanghai market Wednesday.
C-3PO’s Use Case
Investor fervor around an IPO doesn’t necessarily translate to a business model that can keep appealing to investors; just ask Beyond Meat or Peloton. Unitree’s powerful market debut does beg the question of whether the humanoid robots will be key players in making AI advancements more useful to humans, or simply theatrics.
“Humanoids are probably more like swapping steam engines for electric motors than redesigning the factory floor,” Amelia Michael, a non-resident fellow at the think tank Foundation for American Innovation and a research scholar at GovAI, recently wrote. As in, the result would be only minor productivity improvements. “It would be surprising if the human form factor is optimal for most tasks.”
That doesn’t mean companies aren’t releasing them, hoping they change the way we live and work:
- Boston Dynamics’ humanoid Atlas is built in part for industrial work and material handling. The firm also has the four-legged dynamic sensing bot Spot, which it says can offer insight into potentially hazardous situations.
- Tesla’s Optimus is a general-purpose humanoid that the company says can perform “unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks.”
The Droids You’re Looking For Are From China: Unitree’s home country is also the robotics supply chain leader. It’s now almost impossible to build a humanoid robot without parts from Chinese companies, Ming Hsun Lee, the head of greater China industrials at BofA Global Research, told The New York Times. “The component cost in China has gone down way too fast,” he added. “Other countries can’t compete.”
