When Edward Warchocki speaks with you, he seems like a daily man. “Not tremendous clever, however very emotional, very straightforward to make pals with,” says Bartosz Idzik, the one who created him. However when he doesn’t speak, it’s tougher to neglect what Warchocki actually is: a 4-foot-tall humanoid robot that’s wandering the metropolis streets of Poland.
Six months in the past, Idzik and his buddy Radosław Grzelaczyk had the thought of shopping for a humanoid robotic from China. They named it “Edward Warchocki” after Grzelaczyk’s canine Eddie and the Polish phrase for growling, “warczeć,” but additionally as a result of it seems like a satisfactory identify for a Pole. The primary few days they took Edward out, it couldn’t communicate, and folks had been clearly terrified of it. Then Idzik, a software program developer, wired Edward to a big language mannequin that made it able to having dwell conversations in Polish.
“When he began to speak, individuals cherished him. With out speaking, it’s only a 40-kilogram machine,” Idzik says.
Edward quickly made a number of pals. It visited the Polish parliament and talked to politicians, hiked up mountains and waded in the lake, and was jokingly arrested by the police. In April, a video of it chasing away wild boars in Warsaw, armed with a backpack and a Rolex, went viral worldwide. By now, Edward has over 1 million followers and 4 billion views throughout social media.
In 2026, you will need to have seen at the very least one in every of these humanoid influencers vibing round the world. There’s “Rizzbot,” which wears a cowboy hat and flirts with passersby on the streets of Austin; “Bart Robot,” which was breakdancing with Knicks followers in New York, celebrating the crew’s historic championship; and the “Brickell Clanker,” which turned into totally different jerseys to get together with World Cup followers after every recreation.
However until you’ve been paying shut consideration, you most likely haven’t realized these robots are all the similar mannequin: Unitree G1, one in every of the most accessible and inexpensive humanoid robots on the international market as we speak, made by a Chinese company that’s leading the robotics industry. The G1 is about the dimension of a kid, with a hollowed-out face with a hoop of blue gentle and light-gray limbs product of aluminum. It’s going on America’s Got Talent, showing off kung fu, having boxing matches, parkouring, dancing at concerts, running with kids, cooking (but failing), streaming with Kai Cenat, begging for money, dating itself, being ordained as a monk in Japan and Korea, and praying at a mosque in Dubai.
An anonymous shitposter on X put it: “This clanker is lit as fuck!”
Unitree will go public on the Chinese language inventory market in about two weeks. Its monetary disclosure tells how in style the firm’s merchandise are: In contrast to most robotic firms whose merchandise are nonetheless being examined in labs, greater than half of Unitree’s 2025 income got here from delivering humanoid robots to actual clients. It shipped 5,511 humanoids in 2025 at a mean value of lower than $25,000 every. And 43 % of all gross sales got here from exterior China. The corporate additionally turned worthwhile for the first time final yr.
“We examined a whole lot of humanoids, and the G1 was the greatest for its objective,” Idzik says. “We are used to China copying different nations, however from the perspective of humanoids, different individuals ought to copy China. ”
Regardless of its business success, the firm and its robots are usually the topic of intense doubts. Positive, they will carry out clout-seeking, crowd-pleasing duties, however can they maintain down a standard job contributing to the economic system, like working on an meeting line or cleansing a home? When will Unitree G1 get an actual job?
Shopping for It in the US
Jake Cooperstein, a 24-year-old who lives in Miami, says he was impressed by Edward and different accounts to create a humanoid influencer of his personal. In January, he visited the warehouse of a robotics store in New York and examined the Unitree G1 robotic. He was impressed by how straightforward it was to function. The following day, he secured an order and paid the deposit.
On Unitree’s web site, a primary G1 robotic is priced at $13,500, however that’s before any tariff, delivery, and taxes. A US distributor lists the robotic at about $19,000 as a substitute. Cooperstein was not happy with that, although. Probably the most primary model doesn’t include extra subtle elements like dextrous hands and is prohibited from modification. He as a substitute selected the U5 variation that’s designed for instructional consumers. It has extra elements and higher customization however sits at the value of $66,000.
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