HUMANOID ROBOT FOUNDER ADMITS HIS BOTS ARE SLOWER THAN HUMANS

🔴 Unitree stock surged 460% on IPO day. The next day it fell 18.7%.

In between, the company's founder stood up at the World Robot Conference in Beijing and said the quiet part out loud.

Wang Xingxing said humanoid robots are still not as efficient as humans and take time to learn new skills, calling it a bottleneck for the whole industry, CNBC reports.

The engineering gap has a shape. Keenon COO Wan Bin said getting a robot to complete 50% of a task well is relatively easy. Even 80%. Pushing to a 99.9% completion rate is what really tests engineering and training. Keenon has shipped more than 100,000 robots and expects to pass 150,000 units by the end of next year, with partners including Buffalo Wild Wings and Hilton.

The demand side is blunter. Jeff Burnstein of the Association for Advancing Automation told CNBC that US customers don't ask for humanoids. They ask for a solution, and they don't care whether it's a humanoid, a traditional robot, a collaborative robot, or a robot at all. His line: the onus is on the humanoid players to show they have one that's affordable, safe and ready to use.

📉 Policy is moving faster than deployment. The FCC last month added foreign-made advanced robotic devices, including humanoids, to a list restricting US imports. No country was named, and previously approved models can still come in. Burnstein said the real impact lands on autonomous mobile robots, which factories actually use.

Would you buy a robot that finishes 80% of the job?

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