The economics of the cheapest humanoid currently available (Unitree R1)

[Alan Timm]

Thomas started a conversation with me today about the Unitree R1 and it was so good I'm going to share the highlights.  (Thanks Thomas!)

https://www.unitree.com/R1

https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-r1?variant=50941270163689''

So Unitree updated their product and storefront page with pricing and details on the 3 different R1 models.

A little back of the napkin calculations:

The R1 Air and R1 are radio controlled toys.  you can drive them around but you can't program them.

And all of their robots have enabled secureboot, so it's unlikely you'd be able to buy the cheap one and crack it to unlock programming capability, but...

The same guys that did the jailbreak for the Go2 are on the case, so you never know?

And for those of you thinking you can buy the cheap one and use it as a bag-o-parts and make your own control systems and cpu --  first you'll need to crack the encrypted comms for the bldc motor units.  to my knowledge that hasn't been done on the go2 motors either.

The R1 EDU is the only version that is programmable, but we're talking about company/university/committed hobbyist levels of programming.  Not blockly so much as end-to-end programming like gr00t or isaac lab.  not for the faint-of-heart.

So assuming that EDU is the 100TOPS Jetson Orin NX 16gb unit, you're not going to be able to run Gr00t on it anyways so you're limited to other frameworks and issac lab rl trained models.   Just like the G1, people are throwing compute backpacks on these guys with either Orin AGX or Thor, or just doing the compute remotely.

And instead of paying for their incredibly overpriced DEX-3 hands you can go with your own open source hand design or something like the amazinghand:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/95115c05528ff95759d5a625/w/a17974ee809ad259cf346b79/e/b78d99e19a5237928e2e9c57?renderMode=0&uiState=6a383790654e2233d12ec8c3

So even at $16k it's the lowest cost full-size-ish humanoid on the market right now.

But you're going to be spending most of your time with the R1 under a gantry anyways until you figure everything out.

So what do you think?  

[Thomas Messerschmidt]

So I’m talking to Alan‘s AI?

Thomas Messerschmidt

-  

Need something prototyped, built or coded? I’ve been building prototypes for companies for 15 years. I am now incorporating generative AI into products.

Contact me directly or through LinkedIn:   

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ai-robotics/

On Jun 21, 2026, at 12:25 PM, Alan Timm <gest...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thomas started a conversation with me today about the Unitree R1 and it was so good I'm going to share the highlights.  (Thanks Thomas!)

https://www.unitree.com/R1

https://shop.unitree.com/products/unitree-r1?variant=50941270163689''

So Unitree updated their product and storefront page with pricing and details on the 3 different R1 models.

A little back of the napkin calculations:

<screenshot_20260621_120508.jpg>

The R1 Air and R1 are radio controlled toys.  you can drive them around but you can't program them.

And all of their robots have enabled secureboot, so it's unlikely you'd be able to buy the cheap one and crack it to unlock programming capability, but...

The same guys that did the jailbreak for the Go2 are on the case, so you never know?

And for those of you thinking you can buy the cheap one and use it as a bag-o-parts and make your own control systems and cpu --  first you'll need to crack the encrypted comms for the bldc motor units.  to my knowledge that hasn't been done on the go2 motors either.

The R1 EDU is the only version that is programmable, but we're talking about company/university/committed hobbyist levels of programming.  Not blockly so much as end-to-end programming like gr00t or isaac lab.  not for the faint-of-heart.

So assuming that EDU is the 100TOPS Jetson Orin NX 16gb unit, you're not going to be able to run Gr00t on it anyways so you're limited to other frameworks and issac lab rl trained models.   Just like the G1, people are throwing compute backpacks on these guys with either Orin AGX or Thor, or just doing the compute remotely.

And instead of paying for their incredibly overpriced DEX-3 hands you can go with your own open source hand design or something like the amazinghand:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/95115c05528ff95759d5a625/w/a17974ee809ad259cf346b79/e/b78d99e19a5237928e2e9c57?renderMode=0&uiState=6a383790654e2233d12ec8c3

So even at $16k it's the lowest cost full-size-ish humanoid on the market right now.

But you're going to be spending most of your time with the R1 under a gantry anyways until you figure everything out.

<screenshot_20260621_122126.jpg>

So what do you think?  

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<screenshot_20260621_122126.jpg>

<screenshot_20260621_120508.jpg>

[Alan Timm]

Not yet.  Lloyd has access to my email and calendar but isn't allowed to respond or write them -- yet.  :-)

Alan

[Alan Timm]

Oddly enough there isn't alot on youtube showing off the R1 yet.

Here are the only two substantial videos I can find.  Both are non-english but give you a good look at the robot and capabilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy0Kv3TYdnM (Czech Republich)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E29jx43zcA (Russia)

[Thomas Messerschmidt]

It's interesting to watch the videos. I agree, these are expensive toys. 

A couple of observations:  I don't like the robot's head. It looks like a skull with ski goggles. What were they going for? And, it is much smaller than I imagined. 

And the quadruped--the guy sat on it! I didn't know those could take a man's weight. 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rssc-list/64eff351-1d96-4edd-a3ed-23102d70cdb0n%40googlegroups.com.

[Alan Timm]

Yeah they really missed the mark with the R1 head and the H2 head in my opinion.  

So weird.

So I probably won't be plopping my credit card down for any of these any time soon.

And I was thinking...  

Alfie is almost as tall as R1, has working hands, and has a propensity to fall over just like the R1.  And at 1/10th the price and supports the full gr00t n1.7 model on board.

I think Alfie will keep my busy for a while.  :-)

Alan

[Alan Timm]

It looks like there were a couple of revisions of the head, and the settled on the worst one.

Here is most likely an earlier version.

https://www.robotshop.com/products/unitree-r1-edu-u2-humanoid-robot

[Thomas Messerschmidt]

What will the groot model do for the robot? Have you gotten any of it working? I have yet to dive into the capabilities of it.

Thomas Messerschmidt

-  

Need something prototyped, built or coded? I’ve been building prototypes for companies for 15 years. I am now incorporating generative AI into products.

Contact me directly or through LinkedIn:   

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ai-robotics/

On Jun 23, 2026, at 10:31 AM, Alan Timm <gest...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah they really missed the mark with the R1 head and the H2 head in my opinion.  

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rssc-list/e38c973e-e0fd-47e5-9d37-b42ebc129a55n%40googlegroups.com.

[Chris Albertson]

>
>
> The R1 Air and R1 are radio controlled toys. you can drive them around but you can't program them.

I think you might consider them as a box of robot parts. Buy the robot, then go in with a screwdriver and remove the computers, but keep the motors and the H-bridge drivers and the battery. I think it would actually be cheaper to do this hardware hack than to buy all the motors and machine the metal parts.

Don’t bother to try and hack the software; replace the computers.

That said, 99% of the people who would buy this would be happy to simply drive it around using an Xbox controller.


But if you really want to do some programming, you can’t start with big projects like generalized housekeeping, construction tasks or building a spaceport on Mars. You have to start with simple things like “grasp planning,” where the robot decides how it will place its fingers over some object. For that, all you need is a robot hand on the end of a stick. There is so much of this simple stuff, and in each case, all you need is enough hardware so you can validate the algorithm. It would be years before you could put it all together.

A fully programmable robot will do you no good if you don’t have the software you need to program it.


Every time I price out the components needed to build a full-size humanoid that is powerful enough to do real tasks, it ends up costing more than the price of an entry-level Toyota. You can’t do it for only $20K. So seriously, buying a cheap robot, then adding your own computer, is actually cost-effective.

[Alan Timm]

Hey Chris,

You wouldn't be the first person to think that, and there's a handful of very motivated and talented peeps attempting to figure out how to crack the R1 like we did with the Go2, but there's a few things getting in the way.

Looking back to the Go2, more than one person bought the Go2 air specifically to re-purpose the motors for other projects, but were unable to interface to them as they had no documentation on the proprietary comms for the motors.  Both the protocol and the CRC got in the way.  Even after we Ghidra'd some of the earlier firmware to figure it out.  To my knowledge no one was able to get the motors to work outside of the robot.

Then later on they pushed updated firmware to all Go2 motors as part of a firmware update and the comms changed again.   Then they enabled secure boot and started encrypting and obfuscating the host firmware to make it almost impossible to figure out. 

AS OF RIGHT NOW, it appears that R1 security is just like early Go2 in that some portions aren't as locked down as they'll end up in the near future.

I'd keep your credit card in your wallet for a bit, if it's anything like Go2 the most you can hope for is to gain root to the host computer and go from there.

And if they do figure something out and you're feeling lucky?

You could buy the cheap versions, R1Air @ $8k or the R1 Standard @ $10k and hope yours was manufactured and shipped before they locked everything down.

I'll definitely post updates as they (hopefully) make progress.

Alan

[Chris Albertson]

The security features are totally unimportant. And not even relevant here.

If you remove enough of the electronics eventually to have three wires leading to each motor and they are analog. The PCB that controls the motor would be tossed in the trash.

The goal should be to not leave even one byte of firmware in the robot.

If you are even taking about “gaining root access to the main computer,” you missed my point. Toss the main computer in the trash and don’t bother. Computers are cheap as dirt. Buy a new one.

I would never in a million years want a robot if I did not also have 100% of the source code that runs it. The SimpleFOC project provides very good open-source motor control and many reference hardware designs.

I know 100% that one ESP32-S3 microcontroller can run FOC computation for two motors and also run a CAN bus interface. To do that, you need a generic gate driver chip and 6 MOSFETs, and you need to hire a company like JLCPCB to make it for you. They are cheap and charge about 20 cents for the PCB, but those high-power MOSFETs are not cheap, costing maybe $20 for all the parts.

These computers are cheap to replace. Seeed Studio sells them for $5 each. You don’t hack it, you replace it. Hacking might be impossible because there are one-time on-chip fuses that can be blown. But it does not matter because your interface is to power leads on the motor.

[Chris Albertson]

To be clearer. See the photo below of an example motor. The software hacker looks at that USB port and tries to figure out what commands he can send to that port. He fails because the commands are encrypted.

The hardware hacker sees four screws securing a cover plate and removes the plate, then removes the PCB. Then he puts his own PCB in its place and puts the cove plate back on. To him, the encryption is irrelevant. This works because the PCB costs only about $12 to replace.

[Alan Timm]

Quick update.

A buddy of mine just took delivery of his Unitree R1 Pro and showed me his import tariff bill.

My best guess for import tariffs was $2360 and that's less than 1/2.

I think that puts his total out of pocket for the Unitree R1 Pro at ~$8170.00?