X Square Robot recruiting families to trial their humanoid

Nanshan-based startup X Square Robot is recruiting families willing to trial its next-generation robots for domestic chores, according to the company's official website.

Those interested can the QR code to fill in an application form for the humanoid nanny. Images courtesy of X Square Robot

Those interested can fill out an application form on the front page of x2robot.com to apply. The company did not reveal its selection criteria. However, the application form asks questions about the family home, including whether there is a pet, whether it is easy to move around, the size of rooms, and the user's expectations of the humanoid.

The robot, which will enter selected homes on May 25, is powered by Wall-B, the world's first World Unified Model (WUM) developed by the company itself, which allows the robot to learn on the job, according to Wang Qian, the company's founder and CEO.

Wang Qian, the company's founder and CEO, announces the trial program at a news briefing in Beijing on April 21. 

"At 7:00 in the morning, the alarm goes off. You get out of bed and walk to the living room. You have no idea where your slippers have been kicked off to. The dishes from last night are still in the kitchen sink. The child's backpack is thrown on the floor. The cat has knocked over a glass of water."

Wang explained that the typical home environment is random, fragmented, and constantly changing. Currently, there is not a single robot in the world that can independently complete the comprehensive tidying tasks described in the above scenario without remote control.

While robot demonstrations on stage — backflips, street dancing, calligraphy writing — are visually striking, these actions follow preset trajectories.

In a factory environment, a single action can be repeated ten thousand times with identical conditions each time. At home, however, you might perform ten thousand different actions, each only once, and each under different environmental conditions.

"The hardware is already there — bipedal locomotion, dexterous hands, force-controlled joints — all good. But the 'brain' hasn't caught up. The bottleneck for robots today is not the physical body, but intelligence," Wang said. As a result, bringing robots into the home is widely regarded as "one of the toughest challenges of our time."

At the end of 2024, the company released its first-generation embodied intelligence model, WALL-A, which integrates perception, reasoning, and precision manipulation. Wall-B is an upgraded version of WALL-A.

Wang revealed that the technical details of Wall-B will be unveiled at the first Guangdong Province AI Application Matchmaking Conference, to be held in Shenzhen on April 27.