Hanson Robotics Limited

Hanson Robotics of Hong Kong was founded in 2013 by David Hanson and is the creator of Sophia, a humanoid social robot with a female appearance. Sophia was activated in February 2016 and first shown publicly at the SXSW festival in March that year. In January 2018 she received functional legs that let her walk. These are the milestones confirmed by our source, English Wikipedia. Sophia's story is above all a media story: the robot appeared on stages, in conversations and at shows, not in factories. The company does not publish height, weight, degrees of freedom or price, and that fact says something about its model: it sells an image, not a specification. Funding and headcount are unconfirmed. An important distinction for the reader: Sophia does no physical work, unlike the industrial humanoids we write about in “Humanoid Robots in Factories 2026”. She is a robot for conversation, companionship and shows; the line between a show and a product is worth keeping in mind when reading “VLA Models: How AI Controls Humanoid Robots in 2026”.

The company is represented here by the Sophia, a social robot with pilot status. Its uses are companionship and entertainment, customer service, therapy and education, and its audiences are event organizers, senior care and schools. The maker gives no technical data or price, so there is nothing to put in a table, but the roles can be compared. Closest to Sophia is the Engineered Arts Ameca from Engineered Arts, another social humanoid with an expressive face, and further out the Realbotix Aria, Mirokaï and Pepper. At the other end of the scale stand working humanoids such as the Unitree G1. If you plan to use a robot to talk with customers, see the category “Service robots”, and for events the guide “Renting a Humanoid Robot for an Event”. Because the technical data is not public, anyone considering Sophia for their own project has to ask the maker about everything from scratch: how conversation is controlled, safety, running costs and service support. Experience with similar robots shows that in practice the show is only part of the work; the other part is preparing the conversation script, because a robot without well-written content quickly bores an audience. Anyone planning uses in senior care should check safety and consent issues separately.

Hanson Robotics' position is described in the sources only through its brand: Sophia is one of the names most often mentioned in talk about humanoids. We do not confirm funding, valuation, stock listing or headcount, nor do we know customer names; the applications listed are directions, not a list of deployments. The competition is companies with social robots: Engineered Arts with Ameca, Realbotix, Aldebaran Robotics with Pepper and SoftBank Robotics, as well as PAL Robotics. Compared with these firms, Hanson stands out for its image and stage presence, but has no confirmed data that would let us judge how repeatable the product is. Privacy for robots that talk with people is covered in “Data Security: Robots with Cameras and the GDPR”, and the economics of renting versus buying in “How Much Does a Humanoid Robot Cost in 2026”. For event organizers this means that choosing a social robot today is a matter of image and budget, not parameters. It is worth asking for a demo and talking to someone who has already worked with such a robot.

Hanson Robotics' presence in Poland is unconfirmed: there is no distributor, no recorded shows or deployments, and Sophia is marked as unavailable locally. An event organizer who wants such a robot on stage has to approach the manufacturer directly or an events agency, bearing the transport costs. It is a conversation about rental, not purchase. If someone wants a robot for educational purposes, alternatives are described in “Educational Robots for Schools and Universities”, and for shows in the sections “Robots for Events and Trade Shows” and schools. There is also no local service. For a school or community center this means having to find their own intermediary for every attempt to organize a show.

Hanson Robotics is a media brand: since 2016 Sophia has shown that a robot can be a face, but it does not provide the data to consider her a product. Without a specification and price we will not compare her with working robots; as inspiration and a stage attraction, certainly. If you want an audience to stop and look, one good performance is enough. We will leave it there: more cannot be read from the sources.