Unitree's Wang Xingxing: Robots Expected to Achieve Key Breakthrough Within Two to Three Years

The 2026 World Robot Conference Forum was held in Beijing from August 19 to 22, where Wang Xingxing, Chairman of Unitree Technology (688836-CN), attended and delivered a speech.

Wang Xingxing stated that the biggest bottleneck in the global development of general-purpose robots lies in the insufficient generalization capability of embodied intelligence.

'Simply put, most current AI models can achieve near 100% task success rates when trained with sufficient data in fixed scenarios. However, once the manipulated object is changed or the environment slightly altered, the robot's task success rate drops significantly,' he said.

According to a report by Cailianshe, Wang Xingxing indicated that, from a development cycle perspective, the industry could achieve a critical breakthrough in as fast as two to three years, or as long as five to ten years.

He emphasized that the inflection point for industrial explosion is very clear: 'When we can bring a robot into any unfamiliar household environment and it can autonomously complete around 80% of daily tasks based on voice commands, it means embodied intelligence has achieved a substantive breakthrough—this will be the tipping point for the general-purpose robot industry.'

Wang Xingxing also addressed why their products have not yet been widely promoted in factories or homes. 'The main reason is that the overall efficiency and capability of the robots are still insufficient. Simply put, although our robots can perform certain tasks, their efficiency is still lower compared to humans.'

Additionally, he noted that when humanoid robots face new tasks, they require retraining, which makes the process even less efficient. 'Therefore, we hope to further generalize the technology and enhance its precision before large-scale deployment in specific scenarios.'