A real-life Transformer! UBTECH Technology launches the world’s first mass-produced robot vehicle, priced at $570k

Chinese robotics company Unitree Robotics released its latest product, GD01, on May 12 — a manned mecha that can freely switch between bipedal humanoid and quadruped crawling modes, arguably bringing the sci-fi scenes from the blockbuster films Transformers and Pacific Rim into reality. This release is not just a technological spectacle, but also reflects the rapid push forward of China’s robotics industry.

Unitree Unveils: GD01, A Manned Transformable Mecha, from $650,000 The world’s first production-ready manned mecha. It can transform. It’s a civilian vehicle. It weighs ~500kg with you inside. Please everyone be sure to use the robot in a Friendly and Safe manner. pic.twitter.com/xa6eNiRDdV

— Unitree (@UnitreeRobotics) May 12, 2026

Unitree Robotics launches the world’s first mass-produced transformable mecha GD01

South China Morning Post data states that GD01 is made with high-strength alloy and, with a driver inside, weighs 500 kilograms in total — roughly the weight of a platform piano. Its starting price is RMB 3.9 million (about $574k). Unitree Robotics positions it as a civilian transportation vehicle and claims it is the “world’s first mass-produced transformable mecha.”

In the official demonstration video, the GD01 driver sits in a cockpit built into the robot’s torso. The robot is able to walk using a humanoid gait, push over a brick wall with its hands, then complete a chassis reconfiguration to switch into a quadruped crawling mode. This transformation mechanism showcases Unitree’s technical integration capabilities in mechanical design and motion control.

Mass-production capability and market position: China accounts for nearly nine-tenths of global humanoid robot sales

GD01’s launch is Unitree Robotics’ further extension of its already-strong product lineup. According to data from research firm Omdia, in 2025 Chinese companies accounted for about nine-tenths of global humanoid robot sales, and Unitree Robotics shipped more than 5,500 units last year, ranking among the top in its peer group worldwide.

Compared with US competitors, Chinese manufacturers continue to expand their advantage in this wave of the robotics industry, thanks to lower production costs and faster mass-production timelines.

Beyond hardware: competitor AgiBot advances from the “brain”

While Unitree Robotics continues to expand the boundaries of its hardware, another Chinese humanoid robotics startup, AgiBot, has chosen to push forward from the software side. This April, AgiBot released the Genie Envisioner World Simulator 2.0 (GE-Sim 2.0), attempting to upgrade the “world model (World Model)” from a tool that simply understands the environment into a virtual simulator that can directly train and optimize robots.

The core breakthrough of GE-Sim 2.0 is incorporating “Action” into the model’s core variables, creating a complete loop of “state → action → state evolution.” This allows robots to actively try out and autonomously optimize within the virtual environment, without relying on expensive and difficult-to-scale real-world training data. The system can currently generate stable videos on a minute scale, and it also includes an automatic task evaluation module, enabling the reinforcement learning process to run autonomously.

-(AgiBot GE-Sim 2.0: generate the world with World Model; Unitree’s challenger pushes humanoid robots toward self-evolution)

However, just recently the chairman of TSMC, Wei Zhejia, publicly pointed out that China’s robots jumping around is just for show; the key still lies in the robot’s “brain.” And currently, the chips that drive these “brains” still heavily rely on external vendors such as Nvidia, with 95% manufactured by TSMC.

In other words, regardless of how Unitree or AgiBot breaks through in hardware and software, the gap in the chip and computing power supply chain remains a bottleneck that China’s robotics industry can hardly avoid.

-(On-the-ground visits to China’s AI labs: researchers reveal that the “chip and data gap” is key to the difference between China and the US)

From hardware to the brain, the China-US robotics race continues to heat up

Unitree Robotics demonstrates a high level of technological ambition with a manned mecha that can “transform.” AgiBot reshapes how robots learn with a world model. Together, they equally outline a development path of parallel progress in China’s robotics industry: “hardware scaling” alongside “AI intelligence.”

As humanoid robots move from laboratories into mass production and from factories onto the streets, this China-US-centered robotics competition is rewriting the tech landscape at an unprecedented speed.

This article: The real-life version of Transformers! Unitree Robotics launches the world’s first mass-produced robot carrier, priced at $574,000. First appeared on Lianxin ABMedia.