There is an interesting detail at the recent robot exhibition.
A start-up talks about “fully self-developed humanoid”. You go around the back to look at the interface.The power supply logo is Yushu;
Another roadshow company said “self-developed embodied brain”, and asked what ontology it is running on, the answer“Mainly use Zhiyuan for expedition.”
Ask further,Many teams don’t shy away from buying the body ready-made;People only do upper-level algorithms, interactions and business processes.
This is actually not laziness, it’s just that the humanoid robot industry has come so far.The matter of creating a body has been pretty much involved.
The main body is almost rolled up
It was Yushu who broke through the price first.
In the early years, the entry price of the G1 humanoid was reduced to 100,000, the R1 dual-arm version started at 26,900, and the Go2 robot dog was even cheaper; later, UniStore was launched, and the action library, user square, data set, and developer center were all released, and G1, H1, B2, and Go2 could all be adapted.
The first batch of action packs include “production” skills such as dance, martial arts, heart competition, and disco. It also allows developers to upload self-developed actions and deploy them with one click. For universities and algorithm teams, there is no need to start with joint motors and gait balance. They buy a G1, pick up the camera, adjust the SDK, and run reinforcement learning. They can produce demos in a week and shoot short videos of “delivering water” in a month.
Yushu puts motion control, force control, vision, and simulation to the outside world, and ROS, Python, Jetson, Isaac, etc. can all be connected.
A small team can spend a year or two just “standing steady, not overheating, and not suddenly kneeling down” by developing their own feet; with the current body, engineers can spend all their time on the “brain”.
This is why many overseas developers use G1 for surgical auxiliary experiments, double-arm operations, and commercial performance arrangement——It’s not that I can’t make it, it’s that making it now is not as good as buying it now.
Zhiyuan is taking another path: selling “body”, “data” and “rental” together.
The main body is divided very finely, Yuanzheng does the full-size legs and reception, Lingxi does the lightweight interaction and development, Elf does the wheel arms, and Kutuo does the four legs. In terms of price, Lingxi costs 98,000-109,000, Expedition costs 168,000-620,000, and Elf costs about 450,000.
There are two things that are more friendly to start-ups: one is development tools. Lingchuang does zero-code actions, Lingxinpei interacts, and Genie Studio does training and deployment. Lingxi X1 also opens drawings and communication frameworks, making it low-cost for universities to collect data and run VLA;
The other is leasing. Qingtianzu treats humanoids as “temporary workers hired by the day.” The daily rent of Lingxi X2 Youth Edition starts at 1,499 yuan, and the D1 Edu robot dog starts at 200 yuan. The platform covers 50 core cities, more than 600 service providers, and more than 1,000 pieces of equipment. It also plans to connect more than a dozen main body factories.
For small companies, this is equivalent to changing “spend hundreds of thousands to buy a robot first” to “spend more than a thousand to rent it for two days.”
I will do home storage, exhibition tours, and factory POC. I will rent two Expedition machines and run them for two weeks. After collecting the data, I will see if I should do my own research.Cash flow pressure is of two orders of magnitude.
Not all are covered with shells, they have to be divided into four levels
The team now being “supported” by Zhiyuan and Yushu is actuallyThere are four levels, and they cannot all be called shells.
The shallowest one is the skin-changing pie: Buy G1 standard version or rent Lingxi X2, change the logo, change the shell, adjust the original action package, and rely on preset scripts on site. Annual meetings, shopping mall traffic, and short video accounts are mostly of this type, which are low-cost and fast to produce videos, but the technical depth is basically zero.
往上走是場景二開: Write business flow based on G1 EDU or Yuanzheng A3, connect your own CRM, work orders, navigation words, and capture strategies, and still use the original factory for operation control.
As an integrator, you don’t build the fuselage, but you can earn implementation fees.
A sales agent added 32 languages to the exhibition robot and received an order of 700,000 from the Middle East. This is the path he took.
再往上是算法派: Only buy body running VLA, world model, long-range planning, collect teleoperation data and mark failure samples by yourself. The body is just a vehicle, and changing to G1 or Expedition will not affect brain iteration.
This type is most similar to “embodied entrepreneurship”, but externally speaking it is most likely to be mistaken for a shell, because what you see on the booth is still other people’s joints.
最深的是硬件改法: Change the dexterous hand, add six-dimensional force, change the heat dissipation, write MPC or self-research the bottom layer of reinforcement learning, and then slowly transition to self-developed complete machine. Strictly speaking, it is no longer the use of the current entity, but“Use mature chassis to verify self-developed technology.”
Why did it have to be Zhiyuan and Yushu?
Just five very practical reasons.
First, the price range is comprehensive.There are 30,000-level R1, 100,000-level G1, hundreds of thousands of H1/expedition, and more than 400,000 elves. Scientific research, commercial performance, and industry all have their needs, and it is difficult for small self-developed factories to cover them at the same time.
Second, the SDK is really open.Movement, force control, vision, simulation, and data return are all given to the interface; many manufacturers only give high-level instructions for “forward, shake hands, and play music”, but Zhiyuan/Ushu can give the layer of changeable movement control.
The third is to deliver industrial products.Yushu has offline stores, JD.com, and overseas channels; Zhiyuan has Qingtianzu, service providers, insurance, and operation and maintenance. Self-developed prototypes often “work well at the booth but break down when you get to the door.” If you buy them off-the-shelf, at least you don’t have to deal with the after-sales service yourself.
Fourth, the ecology has network effects.UniStore has actions and data sets, and Zhiyuan has Lingchuang, Lingqu, and Genie. Universities use G1 to write papers and use expedition to collect data. Graduates naturally use the same set of APIs when entering startups, making recruitment and reuse easier.
Fifth, leasing reduces the cost of trial and error.In the past, buying a doll was a heavy asset, but now Lingxi rents it for 1,000 yuan a day, and the G1 has dropped to the 1,000-5,000 yuan range after experiencing high prices during the Spring Festival Gala. When starting a company, we first start projects and then buy equipment. There is no need to spend tens of millions in a round of financing to build feet.
But the other side of “feeding” is “accommodating”.
Yushu has made UniStore into a distribution of movements and skills, which can be installed with one click from the original factory after general dance, welcome, and inspection; Zhiyuan itself has spiritual creation movements, spiritual heart interaction, hive/bee data, and sky rental delivery. What Qianerkai can do, such as “writing a welcome speech and picking up a large model,” will soon be replaced by the official package.
The rental price war has also reached its core: the daily rent of G1 was once priced at 20,000 yuan, but fell back to the 1,000 yuan level in 2026. The price of the Lingxi X2 platform has dropped to more than 1,000 yuan, and operators and travel have to be calculated separately.
The original factory packaged “body + brain + data + rental”, and the team that only modified the skin and adjusted the SDK was the first to be squeezed out.
This is not to ridicule shelling, but the industry is stratified.
Zhiyuan and Yushu have completed the heaviest hardware, supply chain, operation control, and delivery first, so that a group of algorithm and scenario companies have the opportunity to enter the market with zero body; but the window is not permanent.
feed but also kill
To see whether a company that “uses someone else’s body” deserves to be regarded as a technology company, you only need to look at three things:Has the bottom layer of movement control been changed? Has the dexterity and force control been changed? Can the data be reflowed for training?
三樣都不沾，那就是Booth covers;佔一兩樣，是Vertical two openings;三樣全做，才是“Self-research and embodiment”.
The most counter-intuitive thing about humanoid robots is this:Everyone wants to create humans,One of the most stable businesses isSelling one’s body, and then watch others write their brains on their bodies.
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