Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree, delivered a keynote speech at the 2026 World Physical AI Conference, reflecting on Unitree’s progress over the past year and sharing his vision for the future of embodied artificial intelligence. He unveiled Unitree’s ongoing development of a self-evolving system for physical AI robots, dubbed Unitree Rehearsal, which features autonomous cycling capabilities. Driven by a profound sense of urgency, Wang emphasized that this generation stands at the precipice of achieving superintelligence or artificial general intelligence (AGI), a leap that could redefine humanoid robot productivity. He underscored the robotics industry’s immense market potential while cautioning that relentless innovation is essential to stay competitive.

Wang also revealed that since its May 2024 launch, the Unitree G1 robot has achieved a production milestone of 10,000–20,000 units, cementing its status as the world’s best-selling humanoid robot. He argued that global underestimation of AI’s transformative power persists, but breakthroughs in physical AI are now imminent, signaled by advancements like GPT-6. Predicting a paradigm shift within one to three years, he likened the anticipated progress in embodied intelligence to ChatGPT’s disruptive impact. The current bottleneck, he noted, lies in harmonizing AI model inputs/outputs with real-world robotic execution—a challenge where commercial service applications will outpace household and industrial adoption. By late 2024 or 2025, he foresees robots executing tasks like room tidying via voice commands, marking a tangible step toward intelligent automation.