UBTech, a Chinese robotics company, has started production at what it calls the world's first industrial humanoid robot super factory built for 10,000-unit annual capacity. The plant, located in the northern ecological new district of Liuzhou, Guangxi, was inaugurated on September 12, according to the Liuzhou media outlet 'Liuzhou No.1'.
The factory uses industrial simulation systems and a digital 'smart brain' to coordinate operations, embodying a 'robots making robots' model. With a designed cycle time, the line can roll out one robot every 10 minutes, with an annual planned capacity exceeding 10,000 units.
Walker S2: a full-size industrial humanoid
The facility is purpose-built for UBTech's Walker S2, a full-size industrial humanoid robot. Standing 1.76 meters tall, the Walker S2 features a fourth-generation industrial dexterous hand and a bionic arm. Its hand, sized like a human's, can perform sub-millimeter precision tasks and has passed durability tests exceeding 80,000 cycles. The bionic arm uses a fully hollow structure with integrated cabling, enabling high-difficulty actions such as autonomous battery swapping.
The robot is the first in China to adopt a pure RGB binocular vision system for its head, mimicking human eyes to improve adaptability in factory environments. With 52 degrees of freedom, the Walker S2 can handle payloads up to 15 kilograms across a full 0-1.8 meter range and rotate its waist ±162 degrees.
UBTech partnered with Siemens to create a dedicated digital manufacturing foundation for humanoid robots, addressing challenges such as numerous components, high transfer frequencies, assembly precision, and rapid product iteration.
Autonomous battery swap and AI brains
The Walker S2 is powered by UBTech's proprietary Co-Agent, an intelligent agent technology claimed to be the world's first designed specifically for industrial humanoid robots. It integrates multimodal reasoning large models, embodied interaction large models, skill-specific small models, and human-like chain-of-thought technology, enabling intent understanding, task planning, tool invocation, and autonomous anomaly handling.
The robot also achieves what UBTech calls a global first: autonomous battery swapping. With dual batteries that charge and discharge simultaneously, a standardized battery compartment for quick swaps, and dual-arm coordinated precision swapping, the Walker S2 can operate 24/7 without interruption.
The factory's launch marks a significant step in scaling humanoid robot production for industrial use, a sector where UBTech is competing with global players. The company has not disclosed pricing or customer orders for the Walker S2, but the new facility signals its ambition to lead in manufacturing humanoid robots at scale.
Based on reporting by IT之家. Edited and published in English by geisou.
