UBTech U1: A Robot for Very Special Needs

Almost 4,000 pre-orders in ten days, advance payments totaling over ten million yuan. One might think China had just discovered a robot that does laundry. It hadn't. UBTech's U1 can neither climb stairs nor handle household chores—the manufacturer explicitly states it wasn't built for that. It stands, sits, stands up again, and talks to you. That's essentially it.

What else it can do, UBTech describes with remarkable seriousness. The U1 wears silicone skin, real hair, and a face that shows expression. It comes in female and male versions, one 168 centimeters tall, the other 183, depending on preference. 88 joints enable movement, the battery lasts two to four hours—roughly the attention span of an average first date. The software reads tone of voice, facial expressions, and speech tempo, estimates mood from these, and responds accordingly. It remembers what you say, encrypted and stored only on the device, because discretion is everything when it comes to special needs.

Officially it's called emotional companionship. The international press didn't waste much time with this description and called it what it is—somewhere between combating loneliness and what people used to search for sheepishly at the back of mail-order catalogs. UBTech itself remains delicately vague, preferring to speak of closeness and care. At around 30,000 dollars per unit—the price is not yet final—one might say this delicacy is well-paid for.

From a Swiss perspective, the U1 is for now a curiosity, not a purchase offer. But demand in China says something about how large the market for artificial affection apparently is, and about what people are willing to spend on it. In robothub24's reference catalog, the U1 is now listed as a profile entry, quite soberly, alongside industrial robots that at least still pretend they want to work.