UBTech: Humanoid robots for the future of manufacturing

Shenzhen-based UBTech (优必选科技), a leading producer of industrial and service robots, is gaining recognition beyond China. The company said in January 2026 that its latest Walker S2 humanoid robots are at most half as efficient as human workers, which shows that humanoids remain in an early phase of prototyping and still have some way to go before they can be fully deployed in industry.

So far, partnerships with tech giants have been limited to pilots and concept-testing. Airbus signed an agreement in 2026 to purchase UBTech’s Walker S2s for aircraft assembly, describing the collaboration as an “early concept testing phase” for broader humanoid applications in aerospace manufacturing. And US chipmaker Texas Instruments (TI) has purchased Walker S2s for its semiconductor plants, potentially creating a reciprocal supply chain arrangement as UBTech integrates TI’s components into its robots.

The Walker S2 was introduced in 2025. It has 162-degree rotation that makes it more flexible in assembly-line tasks, a dual-loop AI system for better performance and adaptability, binocular stereo vision, and automatic battery swap system that lets it operate almost continuously. Earlier Walker robots have been deployed at EV factories such as BYD, FAW-Volkswagen, Geely, Zeekr, and Audi-FAW. They have also been used at Foxconn factories, a major Apple supplier. UBTech, set up in 2012, is also known for its education and entertainment robot Alpha, introduced in 2017 at Europe's biggest tech trade show IFA in Berlin.

UBTech aims to lift the Walker robot’s performance to 80 percent of human productivity by 2027 and scale production from 500 units last year to 10,000 annually. To get there, however, the company must solve challenges around dexterity, motion control, and multifunctioning hands. Data from the Walkers in use now will help their progress.