Impressive … and scary. Why is it that this company is moving so fast when others like Boston Dynamics don’t seem to have made much progress?
On the other side: Years of VC focusing on the next great app to make you some cooked eggs instead of investing in companies operating in the physical world.
1. how could they steal something that western companies dont even have yet?
2. for more fundamental stuff, western companies did transfer knowledge themselves by moving factories to China, in exchange for decades of access to China market and exorbitant profits they earned. Where exactly is "supposed stealing" in unitree ?
It's basically the patent problem.
To my knowledge, China has never been caught infringing on US patents on US soil. A lot of Chinese innovations are simply orders of magnitude better than any US alternative, for example TikTok's algorithm and TikTok as a short-video social network.
So please answer my question, how could China steal anything that either 1) Western companies explicitly granted as part of Joint Venture corporation, 2) Western companies havent even developed themselves, and at best, only possess inferior version, generation or two behind the state of the art?
in IP realm, India for example forcefully nationalizes all pharmaceutical IP and produces generics of brand name drugs for its internal market (1970 Patents Act)
(Im basically rewording my original comment, you didn't get my point the first time)
And then a tiny little one on the bum like a cutesy tail <3
>> High Payload:
>> Static 150 kg;
>> Continuous walking payload approx. 16 kg
And on top of that:
>> Long Endurance:
>> Unloaded 3h+ (>33 km);
>> Loaded > 2h (>16 km)
16 kgs for two hours max is not "extremely valuable to any military". It's hardly even valuable to a leisure camper. You might be able to get this to carry some of your stuff if you go on a short hike, but if you were thinking of going camping and having it carry your camping gear, you can forget about it.
There's already plenty of systems like that, e.g. Ukraine's TW 12.7 [1] or even the MAUL used in rescue missions [2].
What is the niche targeted by Unitree with this robot? What are they selling, exactly; and to whom?
It's worth asking those questions if one wants to go beyond the excitement of watching a cool demo, and towards understanding the state of the art in robotics. Lots of cool videos of robots doing all sorts of impressive stuff around, but those are heavily edited and carefully curated to show what the vendor wants to show. The question is how much of that ends up in use in real-world situations, from homes, to roads to battlefields. The answer usually is: very little.
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[1] https://theconversation.com/ukraines-killer-robots-show-how-...
[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/11/17/robot-coff...
There's a video where it's going uphill over uneven terrain with a load at a much slower pace, which is the same as what Big Dog could do 21 years ago, and another one where it's shown rolling up a smooth, grassy slope while loaded, which is pretty meh.
And that's just carrying a load. Now, you want it to carry an assault rifle and fire it? Like, at enemy targets? And hit them?
You will need to wait for a couple of major breakthroughs in robotics and AI still, I'm afraid.
The other half is yes, of course, any company will fake it till they make it.
But Unitree is definitely making robots.
unitree has done this consistently.
Not doing acrobatics like the marketing video of course, just doing mundane things like going from point A to point B.