en.Wedoany.com Reported - Chunshui Tang and UBTECH launched humanoid companion robots for adults in July 2026, with starting prices of 15,000 yuan and 119,800 yuan respectively, a sixty-fold price gap in the same market segment, highlighting differentiated market positioning.
Chunshui Tang, which has been in the adult products business for over two decades, officially put a humanoid companion robot on pre-sale shelves in July 2026, with a starting price of 15,000 yuan, targeting adults. The product is divided into three height tiers, with the shortest at 1.6 meters starting at 15,800 yuan and the tallest at 1.7 meters priced at 16,800 yuan.
Meanwhile, UBTECH launched its high-end U1 series, with the half-body U1 Lite priced at 119,800 yuan, the full-body standard U1 Pro at 169,800 yuan, and the high-dynamic full-body U1 Ultra at 990,000 yuan for the male version and 880,000 yuan for the female version. UBTECH founder Zhou Jian personally endorsed the series, which has already received 13,000 pre-orders.
In terms of product positioning, the two companies have clear differences. UBTECH defines the U1 series as emotional companionship rather than romantic partners and has established a technology ethics committee to review the product throughout its lifecycle. Chunshui Tang, on the other hand, explicitly targets adult males for emotional companionship and plans to launch a male companion robot for the female market in the fourth quarter of 2026, with future considerations for elderly care companion robots featuring safety monitoring and health reminder functions.
On the technical front, Chunshui Tang's robot follows a "good enough" approach. Its core computing is based on the RK3576 chip and 8GB+64GB memory, with visual data and chat data not connected to the internet to ensure user privacy. The product has 81 passive degrees of freedom for manual posture adjustment and 16 active degrees of freedom in the head for controlling eye movements, smiles, and mouth shapes, but it cannot walk or perform household tasks. UBTECH's U1 series is more complex, with the male version standing approximately 183cm tall and weighing 42kg, and the female version at about 168cm and 35.2kg. It features 88 degrees of freedom and a unique dual-pivot bionic cervical spine, covering 90% of basic human movements, and claims to recognize over twenty types of fine-grained emotions.
Some on-site testers reported that the robot's skin has a silicone-like slightly sticky texture, but its blinking movements still feel mechanical. Battery life is also a current shortcoming, with mainstream full-size products unable to last a full night on a full charge. Yuan Shuai, co-founding initiator of the Xinzhipai New Quality Productivity Meeting Room, stated that the experience of emotional companionship is highly subjective, and there is still a long way to go before machines can provide users with genuine warmth.
Chunshui Tang has revealed plans to enter the elderly care companionship market, intending to add safety monitoring and health reminder functions to its products to address the loneliness of empty-nest seniors.
