UBTECH Robotics

On the floor of Zeekr's factory in Ningbo, a humanoid stands next to people and learns tasks that until now only they performed. That was October 2024, when Shenzhen-based UBTECH announced that Walker S1 robots would be deployed for training tasks at BYD and in Zeekr's smart factory. It is the moment from which to count a new chapter for the company, which is listed in Hong Kong. The founding year does not appear, so we do not give it. What is known is how the path ran from demos to orders. In March 2025 UBTECH presented the educational humanoid Tien Kung at about USD 41,000. In October 2025 it showed the Walker S2, with a high-torque waist and fourth-generation hands, and paid volume deliveries of that model were due to begin in November 2025. The most recent episode belongs to a different world altogether: the companion humanoid UWORLD U1, which was due to reach its first customers from September 16, 2026, with more than 13,000 orders registered. That shift in scale shows the company is not confining itself to the factory floor, even though factories remain its showcase. For more on how such machines work at all, see “How Does a Humanoid Robot Work”, and for the wider market picture see humanoid robots.

UBTECH's portfolio falls into three different stories. UBTech Walker S1 is a humanoid tested in BYD and Zeekr factories, with no public specification or price and available only through enterprise contracts, so it is closer to a deployment project than a catalog product. UBTech Walker S2 is its successor: 52 DOF, a 15 kg payload and an autonomous battery swap in 3 minutes, which matters more in logistics and manufacturing than an impressive walking demo. The manufacturer does not state weight, speed or price, so comparisons with competitors call for caution. The third model, UBTech Walker Tien Kung, targets research and education: 170 cm tall, 20 DOF, up to 2.78 m/s outdoors, and priced from about USD 41,000 (about PLN 158,920 (≈ EUR 36,350)) in pre-order. The delivery date and weight remain unclear. If you wonder what 52 or 20 degrees of freedom mean in practice, see the article “Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in Humanoid Robots”. The applications where Walker S2 makes sense are mainly factories and warehouses; Tien Kung will find its place in universities.

UBTECH is one of the few humanoid makers that deliver robots to industrial customers at scale. Buyers of the Walker S series reportedly include BYD, Geely, FAW-Volkswagen, Audi FAW, BAIC New Energy, Foxconn and SF Express. The company is listed in Hong Kong, but our sources lack public figures on funding, valuation and headcount, so we do not guess. Against Unitree Robotics, which plays on low prices and an open SDK, UBTECH competes on the scale of industrial deployments, not on affordability. It sits closer to AgiBot and Fourier Intelligence, Chinese rivals with a similar appetite for factories, and in the US to Figure AI and Apptronik, which are building their own pilots with carmakers. UBTECH's advantage is its list of automotive customers. Its weakness is the absence of public operating performance beyond customer claims. A wider view of the market and forecasts is in “Humanoid Robot Market Forecasts”, and the Chinese field is compared in “Chinese Humanoid Robots”.

UBTECH has no distribution in Poland: we track no Polish dealer or official representative, and none of the three models described has confirmed availability in the country. We also know of no Polish deployments or university projects involving these robots. A Polish buyer who wanted a Tien Kung for a lab would therefore have to negotiate directly with the manufacturer or through an importer outside the country, with all the risk to service and warranty that entails. The real cost would have to be calculated including customs duty and VAT; “Humanoid Robot TCO: How to Calculate Total Cost” will help. It is also worth watching whether Polish integrators from “Polish Robotics Companies” announce a partnership.

UBTECH is one of the most serious Chinese players when you count real factory deployments rather than demos alone. Walker S2 is an interesting robot for plants with a budget and a corporate customer, but for a Polish company it remains out of reach for now: no sales, no service and no price. Tien Kung may interest laboratories, but the unclear delivery date cools the enthusiasm. Watch, don't order. The biggest question mark is price and real performance, because the manufacturer boasts about its customers, not about working parameters.