The humanoid revolution
From factory floors to our homes, humanoid robots are becoming smarter, cheaper and increasingly ready to work alongside us.
Figure 03 - The housekeeper
This is Techmag's herorobot. Laundry. Dishes. Cleaning. Figure 03 is being built to tackle the jobs humans would rather avoid. Powered by Figure’s Helix AI, it can understand spoken instructions, navigate real environments, and autonomously handle everyday tasks. While no purchase price has been announced, Figure CEO Brett Adcock has suggested future home robots could eventually cost around €350–€520 a month.
figure.ai/figure | Price: TBA
Tesla Optimus - The mass-market one
Tesla doesn't just want to build a humanoid robot — it wants to manufacture them by the millions. Optimus is envisioned as an all-purpose worker that can handle repetitive factory jobs before eventually moving into everyday environments. The real breakthrough could be price: Tesla ultimately wants humanoids affordable enough for ordinary businesses and households.
tesla.com/AI | Approx: €17,000–€26,000
Boston Dynamics Atlas - The athlete
The robot that once amazed the internet with backflips has grown up. The new electric Atlas is being developed as an industrial machine, combining extraordinary mobility with the strength and flexibility needed to manipulate objects in human-designed environments. Few humanoids move quite like it.
bostondynamics.com/atlas | Price: TBA
NEO 1X - The one you can bring home
NEO isn't destined for a warehouse. It's coming for the laundry basket. Designed specifically as a home robot, it can learn and repeat household tasks, respond to natural voice commands and develop new abilities over time. Early Access ownership is already available for €17,300, with US deliveries starting in 2026.
1x.tech | Approx: €17,300
Agility Robotics Digit - The worker
Forget backflips: Digit has a job. Built for logistics and manufacturing, Agility Robotics' humanoid moves materials and totes through facilities originally designed around people. That's what makes it significant. While many humanoids are still demonstrating what they might do, Digit is already accumulating thousands of hours of real-world commercial work.
agilityrobotics.com | Approx: €7,800 per month (RaaS)
Unitree G1 - The affordable one
Humanoid robotics without the six-figure price tag. Unitree's compact G1 offers sophisticated movement, dexterous manipulation, and an open platform for AI and robotics development. At €11,700 before tax and shipping, it demonstrates just how quickly once-exotic humanoid hardware is becoming accessible.
unitree.com/g1 | Approx: €11,700
Unitree H2 - The full-size one
At around 1.8 metres tall, Unitree's H2 looks far more like the humanoid imagined by science fiction. It packs 31 degrees of freedom, powerful joints and high-performance onboard computing into an adult-sized machine — yet its official €25,800 price dramatically undercuts many industrial humanoids.
unitree.com/H2 | Approx. €25,800
Walker S2 - The tireless one
What happens when a robotic worker's battery runs low? Walker S2 changes it itself. UBTECH's industrial humanoid can autonomously swap its own battery in about three minutes, potentially letting it keep working around the clock. It's a less glamorous breakthrough than a backflip — and commercially, possibly far more important.
ubtrobot.com | Approx: €92,000
Apollo Apptronik - The factory hand
Apollo has been designed around one deceptively difficult challenge: doing useful physical work alongside humans. Its first targets are manufacturing and logistics, where humanoids could lift, move and handle materials without factories having to be completely redesigned around conventional robots.
apptronik.com | Price: TBC
Unitree R1 - The €4,000 robot
This might be the most important price tag on the page. Unitree's R1 is a 1.23-metre, 29kg humanoid with up to 26 degrees of freedom and multimodal AI capabilities. The headline isn't that it's the world's most capable robot. It's that a functioning humanoid platform now starts below €5,000.
unitree.com/R1 | Approx: €4,200
As AI optimises more of our lives, Adrian Galea argues that lived experience, taste, judgement and human connection could become our most valuable competitive advantages.