Galbot S1

What it's for

The Galbot S1 is an industrial dual-arm robot from the Chinese company Galbot, designed for tasks where an ordinary cobot lifts too little. It has a 50 kg payload with both arms working at once, 17 degrees of freedom, a mass of 320 kg and a working height of up to 2.3 m. The enclosure is IP54-rated, so it copes with the dust of a factory hall.

The most interesting thing is that the S1 is not just a demonstration. Since spring 2026 it has been working on the production line of a CATL battery factory, which is the best-confirmed piece of information about this model. The exact scope of tasks at CATL is not described, so we do not guess it.

A 50 kg payload and two-handed work point to moving heavy parts on a line factories; that is a conclusion from the specifications, not a description of the tasks at CATL.

For broader background on how humanoid and dual-arm robots are entering plants, see our article on factories “Humanoid Robots in Factories 2026”.

Who it's for

A good fit: large industrial plants, mainly in Asia, with repetitive tasks handling loads of up to 50 kg where two-handed work matters; and companies tracking the development of so-called embodied intelligence.

Not a good choice for: the Polish buyer. The manufacturer does not offer the model in Poland and does not give a price, so for now it is realistically a curiosity from the Chinese market. Nor is it a robot for a small business or a teaching lab. For Poles, models with an established service network, such as KUKA or FANUC, are more realistic KUKA.

Deployments

Confirmed deployment: the CATL battery factory, production line, since spring 2026, in continuous operation rather than as a show. We have no other S1 references. No confirmed deployments, and the model is not offered. In the category of humanoid and dual-arm robots, Polish plants are at the stage of analyses and pilots “Humanoid Robots in Factories 2026”, and the impact of such robots on the labor market is covered separately “Humanoid Robots and the Polish Labor Market”.

Closer to Galbot's philosophy is its own Galbot G1, a wheeled humanoid with two arms that has been serving "Galbot Store" shops in more than 30 Chinese cities since 2026. If you want to compare it with another Chinese player, look at the AgiBot A2 from AgiBot AgiBot.

For heavy tasks in the European ecosystem, a realistic option is the UR30 (30 kg payload, 63.5 kg mass), available through integrators, or the KUKA LBR iisy 11 R1300 (11 kg). These, however, are single-arm cobots and will not replace two-handed work. For moving heavy loads on wheels around a hall, the MiR1350 AMR is the better choice.

Galbot (Beijing Galaxy General Robot) was founded in Beijing in May 2023; behind the company are Yao Tengzhou and Wang He, a professor at Peking University. In under three years it raised about USD 986 million at a valuation above USD 3 billion Galbot. The flagship G1 is a wheeled humanoid; the S1 was presented and put on sale in January 2026, and since spring of that year it has been working at CATL. The company's commercial partners are reported to include Mercedes-Benz, Meituan, Bosch and CATL. We have no detailed list of S1 generations.