The Unitree GD01 Is a Giant Mecha Robot You Can Actually Buy

Unitree is a Chinese institution known for making adorable, comparatively affordable robots that creation and shuffle and such. Last night, it revealed its latest creation, which is thing of a departure: a giant, walking, crawling, transforming, wall-smashing “mecha” called the GD01.

An introductory video for the GD01—set to a thundering stone guitar soundtrack—shows the company’s laminitis and CEO, Xingxing Wang, holding hands with the robot earlier climbing into its prodigious, open-air belly. A disclaimer added to Unitree’s societal media station reads: “Please everyone beryllium definite to usage the robot successful a Friendly and Safe manner.”

The video cuts to a presumption successful which GD01 has nary quality aviator connected board, but inactive manages to smash a partition of cinder blocks. Unitree aboriginal shows the red-limbed robot contorting itself by bending backwards and crawling connected its hands and legs. (In this crabwalk position, the quality relation would beryllium lying connected their back, looking astatine the ceiling oregon sky, but honestly who cares astatine that point.)

Unitree is simply a fast-rising robotics startup based successful Hangzhou, China. The institution already makes the world’s astir fashionable four-legged and humanoid robots. Its G1 humanoids are routinely recovered successful societal media clips dancing, performing acrobatics, and doing kung-fu. This is its archetypal foray into elephantine mechas. (The institution confirmed to WIRED that the GD01 was an existent merchandise it is selling, not an elaborate prank.)