UBTech launches ‘real-life’ robot

Launched on July 1 in Shenzhen, U1 belongs to UBTech’s UWorld brand. The product comes in both male and female avatars with heights of 183 cm and 168 cm respectively, including a half-body Lite version that focuses on AI communication, a Pro version that is a full-body robot, for companionship and service needs, and an Ultra version with better movement and expression capabilities.

U1 is equipped with 88 degrees of freedom servo joints, distributed in the head, neck, chest, waist, arms, hands and legs. According to UBTech, combining a biomimetic cervical spine system using a proprietary dual rotation axis, the robot can perform movements close to humans such as walking, sitting, shaking hands, hugging and performing many natural communication gestures “reproducing about 90% of basic human movements”.

UBTech uses the RK3588 processor manufactured by Rockchip (China), integrating the emotion recognition LLM sensor, introduced as the first in the world, helping to identify more than 20 emotional states with an accuracy of over 90%, aiming to play the role of accompanying users.

The company says the U1’s biomimetic brain architecture combines fast and slow response mechanisms based on cognitive neuroscience principles. Thanks to that, the robot can respond visually in about 500 milliseconds, while also performing complex reasoning tasks, reducing the synchronization delay between voice and lip movements to less than 20 milliseconds, making communication more natural.

U1 runs the Agent Memory OS operating system, allowing memory to be stored and maintained throughout use to build lasting “memories” with users. In addition, proactive care tools based on the ability to recognize the environment help humanoid robots interact contextually without waiting for the user to provide an activation keyword, thereby responding appropriately to the situation and social signals.

According to the manufacturer, personal data interacting with the U1 is stored using encryption locally on the device instead of uploaded to the cloud. Talk to SCMPa UBTech representative said the robot “can converse, maintain eye contact with the user and is only sold to adults”.

The entire U1 is covered in silicon that is “as soft as human skin”. Interesting Engineering According to the assessment, this can be considered a full-sized humanoid robot “with the most human-like appearance and ability to date”.

Jiao Jichao, Vice President of UBTech and Director of the Institute for Humanoid Robotics and Embodied Intelligence Research, said the most difficult thing in creating U1 lies in recreating facial expressions because “it requires thousands of components in the robot’s head as well as an AI model that synchronizes speech with facial movements.”

Products start from 119,800 yuan (464 million VND) to 990,000 yuan (3.8 billion VND). UBTech is currently open for orders until July 15, requiring a pre-order of 3,000 yuan (11.6 million VND) but no purchase required. TNGlobal noted, on the JD e-commerce platform, the page dedicated to U1 currently has more than one million views and 13,000 pre-orders.