Humanoid robot developers are increasingly trying to reduce one of the main barriers to adoption: the amount of engineering required before a robot can perform useful work. New robots from UBTECH illustrate this shift, with built-in skills for industrial material handling as well as reception and service tasks. Smart Robot Solutions is now bringing these systems to the Netherlands, where it plans to add locally developed applications on top of the pre-trained capabilities.
Many humanoid robots entering the market are supplied primarily as hardware and development platforms. After delivery, integrators or customers still need to teach them individual tasks, connect them to business systems and adapt their behaviour to the environment in which they will operate.
UBTECH is taking a different approach with its latest generation. Rather than starting with an empty platform, the company is increasingly supplying robots with predefined capabilities for particular applications.
“Most humanoid robots, after unboxing, cannot really do anything yet,” Sean Qin of UBTECH told Rocking Robots during a visit to the Humanoid Application Center in the Netherlands. “They need secondary development and a lot of effort. That is a big obstacle if you want to scale deployment.”
One example is the new Cruzr Y1, an industrial robot that combines two humanoid arms with a wheeled mobile base rather than legs. It is intended for tasks including material handling, palletising and depalletising, sorting and loading or unloading machines.
According to Qin, some of these applications are already integrated when the robot is delivered. “After unboxing, you can immediately use the robot for selected use cases, such as palletising and depalletising plastic totes and carton boxes, and material handling.”
Legs are not always necessary
The use of wheels is also an indication that the emerging humanoid market is beginning to differentiate between the human form and the practical requirements of a task.
Richard Kuijpers of Smart Robot Solutions says legs add capabilities, but also complexity that is unnecessary in many factories and warehouses.
“This one is built on wheels, so it doesn’t have legs anymore,” he said. “In many cases you simply don’t need them.”
The robot retains characteristics associated with humanoid robots, particularly two arms that can work with equipment and objects designed for people. But a mobile base provides a more conventional way of moving around a flat industrial environment.
Changing the gripper can also change the role of the robot. Kuijpers sees potential applications ranging from moving boxes to machine tending and assembly.
“It all depends on the hands,” he said. “With other grippers it can stand next to a machine, pick up boxes or work in an assembly line. Then it is about the grippers and the learning method.”
UBTECH has already been developing and deploying its Walker S series for industrial environments. The series includes bipedal humanoids intended for manufacturing tasks such as material handling, sorting, inspection and assembly.
From base skills to local applications
Pre-trained capabilities do not eliminate integration work. Instead, they move the starting point.
Smart Robot Solutions plans to build an application layer on top of UBTECH’s existing robot skills. That could include adapting a standard material-handling capability to a customer’s production process or linking a service robot to local software and data.
“We make it custom,” Kuijpers said. “We build an application layer for the market on top of it. But basically, this robot can already do something. It doesn’t only dance; it can actually perform a task.”
That distinction could become increasingly important as humanoid manufacturers look beyond demonstrations and pilot projects. A robot that already possesses a library of tested skills can potentially reduce the amount of development required for each deployment, although integration with machines, workflows and safety systems will still depend on the individual environment.
Qin says the local partner is therefore an important part of UBTECH’s European approach. The Chinese manufacturer provides the hardware and underlying capabilities, while companies such as Smart Robot Solutions provide implementation, service and market-specific applications.
The same model moves into hospitality
UBTECH is applying a similar strategy outside industry.
Its new Walker C1 is a full-size bipedal humanoid service robot aimed at commercial environments. The platform is intended for applications including multilingual reception, guidance and other customer-facing tasks.
Kuijpers gives the example of a robot working in an office or hotel reception. The basic ability to speak with visitors and guide them through a building can come with the platform. A local application could then connect the robot to an organisation’s visitor system.
“You come into an office and the robot says, ‘Hi, welcome.’ You say, ‘I have an appointment with Mr Johnson,’ and the robot can contact him,” Kuijpers explained. “That special application is what we build on top.”
This creates a different development model from programming each deployment from scratch. Manufacturers develop reusable capabilities such as navigation, conversation and manipulation, while integrators build the final workflow around the customer.
Humanoids become more human-like
At the same time, UBTECH is extending the concept toward robots designed specifically for human interaction.
The company has introduced the UWORLD U1 Series, comprising the U1 Lite, U1 Pro and U1 Ultra. These robots move further toward a human-like appearance, with designs intended for environments where social interaction is central to the application.
Kuijpers expects this type of design to be more relevant in environments such as hotels, reception areas and other customer-facing settings.
“If you want to use it as a receptionist, the experience can be different when it looks more like a human rather than a block of metal saying, ‘Welcome to our office,’” he said.
Whether European users will accept increasingly human-like robots in hotels, offices and other public environments remains an open question. Kuijpers expects adoption in Europe to develop more gradually than in China.
For the near term, however, the more significant change may be less visible: manufacturers are moving from selling humanoid hardware toward selling robots with specific jobs already partly learned.
The result is unlikely to be a completely general-purpose humanoid that can immediately perform any task. Instead, the market appears to be developing around increasingly specialised platforms: the wheeled Cruzr Y1 for industrial work, the bipedal Walker C1 for service applications, the Walker S series for industrial humanoid deployments, and the more human-like UWORLD U1 Series for interaction-oriented scenarios.
Across these categories, the common direction is the same: more capabilities are being built into the robot before delivery, while local integrators provide the final application layer needed to turn those capabilities into operational use.
