Chinese company UBTech has unveiled what it said is the world’s first humanoid robot capable of autonomously changing its own batteries.
The Walker S2 robot can detect when its power is running low and replace its depleted battery with a fresh one in fewer than three minutes.
The company released footage showing the 5’3″, 95-pound robot approaching a charging station, removing its battery pack from its upper back using its arms, placing the depleted unit in a charging dock and installing a fully charged replacement before returning to work, all without human assistance.
The robot uses a 48-volt lithium battery in a dual-battery system, providing two hours of walking or four hours of standing before requiring a battery change. Each battery takes approximately 90 minutes to recharge fully.
The Walker S2’s hot-swappable autonomous battery replacement system would allow it to function continuously as long as charged battery packs are available, potentially enabling 24/7 operation in industrial settings.
UBTech has not yet announced a timeline for large-scale production of the Walker S2, describing it only as “coming soon” in a post on X.
UBTech, the first humanoid robot manufacturer to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange, designed the Walker S2 with 20 degrees of freedom and compatibility with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Earlier this year, UBTech’s previous model, the Walker S1, demonstrated collaborative working at a factory used by Zeekr in Ningbo in Zhejiang province.
China ranks third globally in industrial robot density with 470 robots per 10,000 employees, behind South Korea and Singapore but ahead of Germany and Japan. The country holds over two-thirds of the world’s robot-related patents, totaling approximately 190,000.