I spent $4,000 on a robot dog from China
I spent $4,000 on a robot dog from China
我花 4000 美元买了一只中国产的机器狗
On a sunny morning in June, I walked to work with a quadruped robot beside me. I’ve never gotten more attention from strangers. A bunch of people snapped pictures of my robot dog. Several people asked me questions. Was it mine? (Yes.) Did I build it? (No.) Was it being used for surveillance? (No.) Biological dogs kept a safe distance from my mechanical companion. Some growled or barked at it. Children were fascinated. I paused and had it do tricks for several of them: “shake hands,” do a handstand, or leap into the air.
六月的一个晴朗早晨，我带着一只四足机器人步行去上班。我从未受到过如此多陌生人的关注。许多人对着我的机器狗拍照，还有几个人问了我一些问题：这是你的吗？（是的。）是你自己造的吗？（不是。）它是用来监视的吗？（不是。）真正的狗与我的机械伙伴保持着安全距离，有些还会对着它低吼或吠叫。孩子们则非常着迷，我停下来让它为其中几个表演了特技：“握手”、倒立或跳向空中。
I live in a leafy Washington, DC, neighborhood called Mount Pleasant. The neighborhood lives up to its name, so my morning commute is mostly downhill. My robot companion, manufactured by the Chinese company Unitree, walked the two miles to my office near the White House with battery capacity to spare. I recharged the battery during the workday, but it still struggled on the afternoon walk home. We were now mostly walking uphill, and the temperature had risen to 87°F (30°C). The robot’s steps seemed increasingly labored as the path got steeper.
我住在华盛顿特区一个绿树成荫的社区，名叫“愉悦山”（Mount Pleasant）。这个社区名副其实，所以我早上的通勤路程大多是下坡。我的机器人伙伴由中国公司宇树科技（Unitree）制造，它陪我走了两英里路到达白宫附近的办公室，电量还有剩余。我在工作期间给它充了电，但下午回家时它却显得有些吃力。此时我们大多是在走上坡路，气温也已升至 30°C（87°F）。随着坡度变陡，机器人的步伐显得越来越沉重。
As I entered my own neighborhood, I glanced at two indicators in the corner of my phone screen. One showed that the robot’s battery was at 5 percent—dangerously close to empty. The other showed the internal temperature was 84°C (183°F). We were within sight of my front door when the robot suddenly collapsed. I’m not sure if it ran out of power or overheated, but either way it didn’t shut down gracefully—it rolled onto its back with its legs in the air. The light on its “face” was blinking red, and the lidar sensor on its “nose” was still spinning.
当我进入社区时，我瞥了一眼手机屏幕角落的两个指标。一个显示机器人电量仅剩 5%——已处于危险的低电量状态；另一个显示内部温度高达 84°C（183°F）。就在快到家门口时，机器人突然瘫倒了。我不确定它是电量耗尽还是过热，但无论如何，它并没有正常关机，而是四脚朝天翻倒在地。它“脸部”的灯光闪烁着红光，而“鼻子”上的激光雷达传感器仍在旋转。
Several people have asked me what my robot is useful for, and the honest answer is not much. Unitree quadrupeds are widely used for academic research, and they are sometimes used for entertainment. But there don’t seem to be a ton of practical applications. Wheeled robots are faster and more energy-efficient, making them better for deliveries. Flying drones are a better choice for a lot of surveying and inspection work. My robot has no arms or hands, making it mostly useless around the house.
曾有人问我这台机器人有什么用，老实说，没多大用处。宇树的四足机器人被广泛用于学术研究，有时也用于娱乐，但似乎并没有太多实际应用场景。轮式机器人速度更快、能效更高，更适合送货；飞行无人机则是许多测量和巡检工作的更好选择。我的机器人没有手臂或手，这使得它在家里几乎毫无用处。
But my robot did have one big thing going for it: It was astonishingly cheap. I paid $4,017. That’s more money than I’ve ever spent to review a product. But it’s also far less than I would have had to pay for this type of robot a few years ago. And it’s cheap enough that people may find uses for it that wouldn’t have made sense at higher prices. Sometimes what changes the world isn’t the invention of a new technology; it’s figuring out how to make it affordable enough for a mass market.
但我的机器人有一个巨大的优势：它便宜得惊人。我花了 4017 美元。这比我以往评测任何产品花的钱都多，但与几年前购买同类机器人所需的价格相比，这已经便宜得多了。而且它足够便宜，人们可能会发现一些在更高价格下不划算的用途。有时，改变世界的不是新技术的发明，而是如何让它变得足够实惠，从而进入大众市场。
Xerox built the first personal computer with a graphical user interface, but companies like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft made the technology mainstream. Perhaps Unitree will play a similar role for quadruped robots—though, as I’ll discuss later, Unitree’s robots now face legal restrictions in the United States. Unitree has also used quadruped robots as a stepping stone to another market that could be much more important—humanoids.
施乐（Xerox）制造了第一台带有图形用户界面的个人电脑，但苹果、IBM 和微软等公司才让这项技术成为主流。也许宇树科技会在四足机器人领域扮演类似的角色——尽管正如我稍后将讨论的那样，宇树的机器人在美国目前面临法律限制。宇树还将四足机器人作为跳板，进军另一个可能更重要的市场——人形机器人。
Unitree launched its first humanoid robot in 2023. Leveraging its experience making cheap quadrupeds, Unitree is able to sell humanoid robots for as little as $13,500. That’s still way out of my price range, which is why I bought a robot dog instead. But it’s dramatically cheaper than any humanoid you could buy a few years ago. And the low cost has made Unitree a global leader in humanoid robots.
宇树在 2023 年推出了首款人形机器人。凭借制造廉价四足机器人的经验，宇树能够以低至 13,500 美元的价格出售人形机器人。这对我来说仍然太贵了，所以我才买了机器狗。但与几年前你能买到的任何人形机器人相比，这已经便宜得多了。这种低成本优势使宇树成为了全球人形机器人领域的领导者。
Financial markets are bullish. Unitree debuted on the Shanghai stock market on August 19. On its first day of trading, shares shot up more than fivefold. It has lost some altitude since then, but at Monday’s closing price, the company was still valued at $34 billion—more than triple its valuation before the IPO.
金融市场对此非常看好。宇树于 8 月 19 日在上海证券交易所上市。上市首日，股价飙升了五倍多。虽然此后有所回落，但以周一的收盘价计算，该公司市值仍达 340 亿美元——是其 IPO 前估值的三倍多。
Earlier in June, I visited Professor Xuesu Xiao, a roboticist at George Mason University. “Ten years ago, only a very small set of research groups were working on quadruped locomotion because they were the only people on the planet who could build a quadruped,” Xiao told me. “Then Unitree came onto the market. And it basically democratized the entire world of quadruped locomotion research.”
六月初，我拜访了乔治梅森大学的机器人专家肖学素（Xuesu Xiao）教授。“十年前，只有极少数研究小组在从事四足运动研究，因为他们是地球上仅有的能制造四足机器人的人，”肖教授告诉我，“然后宇树进入了市场，它基本上让全球的四足运动研究实现了平民化。”
Xiao gave me a tour of his lab, which had four Unitree quadrupeds. Each cost around $15,000. The lab also had a quadruped robot called Spot. It was made by Boston Dynamics—widely seen as the industry leader before Unitree came along. But Spot is expensive, starting around $75,000.
肖教授带我参观了他的实验室，里面有四台宇树的四足机器人，每台造价约 1.5 万美元。实验室里还有一台名为 Spot 的四足机器人，由波士顿动力公司（Boston Dynamics）制造——在宇树出现之前，该公司被广泛视为行业领导者。但 Spot 非常昂贵，起售价约为 7.5 万美元。
Unitree founder Wang Xingxing developed a crude quadruped robot called XDog for his master’s thesis at Shanghai University. “Marc Raibert from Boston Dynamics is my idol,” Wang told IEEE Spectrum in March 2016. “Their papers helped me to design XDog.” Early Boston Dynamics prototypes—with names like BigDog and WildCat—had gasoline engines and hydraulic actuators. This made them too large, noisy, and polluting for practical use.
宇树创始人王兴兴在上海大学攻读硕士学位时，开发了一款名为 XDog 的简易四足机器人。“波士顿动力的马克·雷伯特（Marc Raibert）是我的偶像，”王兴兴在 2016 年 3 月接受《IEEE Spectrum》采访时说，“他们的论文帮助我设计了 XDog。”波士顿动力早期的原型机（如 BigDog 和 WildCat）使用汽油发动机和液压执行器，这使得它们体积过大、噪音过大且污染严重，难以实际应用。
In that 2016 interview, Wang said that his goal was to “make quadruped robots simpler and smaller, so that they can help ordinary people with things like carrying objects or as companions.” Boston Dynamics officially unveiled an electric quadruped called Spot in June 2016. But Spot didn’t become commercially available until 2020. That created an opening for Unitree, which Wang founded in May 2016.
在那次 2016 年的采访中，王兴兴表示他的目标是“让四足机器人变得更简单、更小巧，这样它们就能帮助普通人搬运物品或作为陪伴。”波士顿动力于 2016 年 6 月正式发布了电动四足机器人 Spot，但直到 2020 年才实现商业化。这为王兴兴于 2016 年 5 月创立的宇树科技创造了机会。