China Leverages U.S. Robotics Research

PHOTO CAPTION: A robot dog outside of the Ghost Robotics headquarters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — China’s Unitree Robotics, one of the world’s largest makers of humanoid and four-legged robots, based some of its most successful robot-dog designs on breakthroughs developed through U.S. military-funded research, according to researchers involved in the work and a former U.S. defense technology official.

Unitree’s $1,600 Go2 model, introduced in 2023, helped the company rapidly gain a dominant position in the global quadruped robot market. Another Unitree robot has appeared on Chinese state television armed and operating alongside People’s Liberation Army troops during an exercise.

Researchers told Reuters that the company’s robots draw on advances in quadruped movement developed through programs financed by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and other Defense Department initiatives.

Gavin Kenneally, a former University of Pennsylvania researcher who worked on the Army-funded program, said the research eventually became “basically, the first Unitree robot that had any kind of scale.”

Ben Katz, who worked at MIT’s Biomimetic Robotics Lab as part of a group of universities receiving military funding, said the dimensions of Unitree’s popular Go series were “to the millimeter” almost identical to the Mini Cheetah, a groundbreaking robot he helped develop.

Reuters found that Unitree did nothing improper in using the research. Findings from the Army program were deliberately published openly in an effort to advance robotics research, which is common practice in government-funded science.

Army Research Laboratory spokesperson Amanda Ligon said the work “strengthened the broader U.S. robotics ecosystem” and contributed to later government and private-sector research. ARL referred questions about Unitree’s commercialization of the technology to the Pentagon, which declined to comment.

China scales what the U.S. helped invent

The episode illustrates a broader challenge for the United States as it competes with China in strategic industries important to national security.

Chinese companies, backed by state subsidies, dense manufacturing networks and a willingness to sustain heavy losses, have gained major global market share in industries including solar panels, drones, electric vehicles and quantum communications. Many of those technologies were initially developed in the United States with government or military support.

Kenneally later commercialized U.S. robotics advances through Ghost Robotics, a Philadelphia-based company that supplies rugged quadruped robots to U.S. special operations forces.

But Ghost’s scale remains far smaller than Unitree’s, and its products are significantly more expensive.

Unitree sold more than 5,500 humanoid robots and 18,000 quadrupeds last year, according to company filings. It was valued at about $9 billion ahead of its stock market debut.

By comparison, no U.S. company has mass-produced comparable humanoid or quadruped robots at similar scale, including Tesla, which has displayed prototypes of its Optimus humanoid for years.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on an earnings call in January that China was “incredibly good” at scaling production.

Boston Dynamics, whose Spot robot uses different technology, recently warned Congress that low-cost Chinese competition could push U.S. robotics companies out of the market.

None of the U.S. researchers interviewed by Reuters argued that military-funded research should have been kept secret. Instead, they said Washington needs to make it easier for U.S. companies to rapidly manufacture and commercialize breakthroughs before foreign competitors do.

“The U.S. excels in innovation and software development,” said Vijay Kumar, dean of Penn Engineering, but needs the capital, industrial capacity, skilled workforce and supply chains needed to scale those technologies.

Washington responds with restrictions

In June, the Pentagon added Unitree to a list of Chinese military companies, describing it as a “contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base.”

The designation is not a full sanction but restricts future U.S. military use of Unitree technology.

Unitree has said its robots are intended for civilian purposes. The company, China’s State Council and China’s Defense Ministry did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

In July, the Federal Communications Commission banned imports of future models of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, including those produced by Unitree.

China has threatened retaliation over the FCC action. China’s embassy in Washington said Chinese companies were making advanced technologies more affordable and accessible and accused the United States of “market distortion and unilateral bullying.”

An FCC spokesperson said the agency was protecting Americans from foreign threats while seeking to position the United States to lead in future technologies.

Most experts interviewed by Reuters supported the restrictions but said trade barriers alone would not create a competitive U.S. robotics industry.

“This isn't just a competition between U.S. and Chinese robotics companies,” Kenneally said. “It's between private U.S. companies and China’s coordinated national strategy.”

Reyk Knuhtsen, a robotics analyst at SemiAnalysis, described America’s failure to turn its research lead into large-scale manufacturing as a “dropped ball.”

“This is a very big hill for the U.S. to climb,” he said.

From Army research to Mini Cheetah

The Army funded the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance from 2010 through 2020, bringing together researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Boston Dynamics, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other institutions.

General Dynamics Land Systems, the Michigan-based defense company that produces the M1 Abrams tank, was the alliance’s primary commercial partner.

In 2016, University of Pennsylvania researchers including Kenneally eliminated heavy central gearboxes and moved motors into robots’ legs, improving their ability to sense and react to terrain. That research built on work at MIT funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

MIT researchers introduced the Mini Cheetah in 2019, incorporating those ideas into a stronger four-legged robot capable of performing backflips.

Months earlier, Katz had published his MIT master’s thesis detailing Mini Cheetah’s actuators. Within six months, he said, Chinese manufacturers were selling copies of the actuators online through AliExpress.

Unitree had been founded three years earlier by Wang Xingxing, then 26.

In a 2016 master’s thesis from Shanghai University reviewed by Reuters, Wang cited MIT research, including earlier versions of the Cheetah robot, and described the lab’s contributions as “pioneering.”

He also referenced an ARL-funded paper by Kenneally and described potential applications for his own research in “defense, security, family and education.”

Unitree says on its website that it independently developed motors, reducers, controllers and some sensors used in its quadruped robots.

Joao Ramos, who researched robotics alongside Katz at MIT, said Unitree copied the Mini Cheetah’s shape, structure and design but also credited the Chinese company with successfully engineering it into a mass-produced commercial product.

“The actual practical implementation, bringing it to real life, that's all on them,” Ramos said.

Robot dogs move toward the battlefield

Walking robots are not yet widely used in combat, but both the U.S. and Chinese militaries have experimented with them.

Chinese media in October showed another company’s “Robot Wolf” quadrupeds during a PLA exercise involving mock beach landings.

Unitree signed a 2022 open letter with U.S. robotics companies pledging not to weaponize robots because of safety and ethical concerns. The company has repeatedly said its products are intended for civilian use.

Even so, Chinese state television has shown Unitree Go2 robots operating alongside troops and a modified B1-series robot firing a mounted assault rifle.

The U.S. military has also experimented with Unitree products.

In September 2023, the Army obtained a federal waiver from rules requiring government agencies to prioritize American-made products so it could purchase two Unitree Go2 robots. Procurement documents described them as necessary because sufficient quantities of comparable U.S.-made products of “satisfactory quality” were unavailable.

Reuters could not determine whether those purchases were completed.

Later that month, U.S. Marines conducted an exercise in which a rocket launcher was mounted on a Unitree Go1 for remote firing.

Ghost Robotics, meanwhile, has shipped about 1,000 Vision 60 robots, mostly to military and government customers for surveillance and search missions in harsh environments. Its first customer was Naval Special Warfare Command, which oversees Navy SEAL teams.

The Vision 60 sells for more than $165,000, while Unitree lists its B-series robot for less than $100,000 in the United States.

Some Ghost Robotics components have also come from China. The company moved its motor supply to South Korea two years ago but still struggles to eliminate Chinese magnets and certain metal parts from its supply chain, Kenneally said.

In 2024, South Korea’s LIG Defense & Aerospace acquired a 60% stake in Ghost Robotics for $240 million. The company is also exploring production in Taiwan.

Kenneally said competing with China will require the United States to rely on allies that still have manufacturing capabilities it lacks.

“We need to work closely with our allies,” he said. “There's absolutely no path forward without them.”

(Source: Reuters)