UBTECH commenced production at a 14,000-square-meter factory in Liuzhou, Guangxi, on September 12, establishing what the company calls the world's first humanoid robot manufacturing base with annual planned capacity exceeding 10,000 units3,4,8. The plant is configured to roll one completed industrial humanoid off the line every 10 minutes5.
The facility operates on a "robots building robots" principle: UBTECH's own Cruzr mobile manipulators with 3D vision handle depalletizing, bin picking, tote replenishment, and station-to-station transfers alongside AGVs and autonomous forklifts. Collaborative robotic arms work with 360-degree rotating stations to drive more than 2,000 fasteners across roughly 50 specifications, logging torque-angle telemetry into the factory's digital backbone.
Mixed-line production and Siemens integration
The factory uses a flexible mixed-line design that allows Walker S series bipedal humanoids, including the industrial Walker S2, and Cruzr wheeled platforms such as the Cruzr S2 and Cruzr Y1 to run on the same manufacturing system without major hardware changes. UBTECH built the facility in collaboration with Siemens Digital Industries Software, deploying a 1:1 digital twin in Siemens Plant Simulation to validate whether the 10-minute takt time was achievable without congestion in tote returns and AGV buffers7. Production scheduling runs on UBTECH's Yanshee MOM manufacturing operations management platform, integrated with Siemens Intelligence Center X.
Assembly avoids a rigid overhead conveyor in favor of flexible stations where workpieces ride self-docking rotating dollies with RFID-linked serial tracking, giving each robot a unique serial number for full-process traceability. Completed units move into a compact high-bay automated storage and retrieval buffer occupying 65 square meters, holding 112 robots, before undergoing more than four hours of burn-in testing for joint, gait, and payload checks and passing through an automotive-grade lighting tunnel for 360-degree visual inspection.
Pricing pressure and market context
The production launch arrives as Chinese humanoid robot prices are falling sharply. Unitree's average selling price dropped 72% from CNY 593,400 in 2023 to CNY 166,400 in 2025, and its consumer model R1 was cut to CNY 29,900 in June6. Localization of core components now exceeds 75%, with motors and controllers above 85%, driving down input costs. Harmonic reducer prices have fallen from CNY 3,000–5,000 per unit to CNY 1,500–2,000, and planetary roller screw prices have dropped by more than 80%. High-degree-of-freedom tactile precision robot hands remain a cost bottleneck, ranging from CNY 100,000 to several hundred thousand yuan per unit, with lifespans of only weeks to a few months.
Global humanoid robot shipments in the first half of this year reached approximately 19,100 units, with Chinese manufacturers accounting for more than 97%. UBTECH delivered 1,079 full-size Walker S2 units last year. Industry observers cited by Kechuangban Daily expect 2027–2028 to be a critical validation period for whether humanoids can reliably perform standardized industrial tasks, with a potential inflection toward standardized commercial procurement around 2028–2030.
UBTECH's Hong Kong-listed shares (09880.HK) rose more than 3% in early trading on September 14, touching an intraday high of HK$80.4 with turnover of HK$125 million1. ANALYSIS The Liuzhou plant converts UBTECH's capacity from pilot-scale to industrial-scale, but filling a 10,000-unit order book will depend on whether automakers and logistics operators move from trials to binding volume commitments before the 2028–2030 window that industry observers have flagged.