Unitree, HKU Team Up for Embodied AI Lab in Shanghai

Unitree Robotics and the University of Hong Kong Shanghai Institute for Advanced Study in Intelligent Computing have jointly established a Joint Laboratory for Embodied Intelligence in Shanghai's Zhangjiang innovation hub.

Ma Yi, Dean of the University of Hong Kong's School of Computing and Data Science, stated that the new institute will focus on research areas including next-generation white-box neural network architectures and world models, with applications targeting general-purpose robotics.

Under the agreement, the joint lab will integrate environment perception, motion planning, real-time control, and task execution into a closed-loop research framework. The goal is to accelerate the transition of embodied intelligence technologies from academic research to large-scale industrial applications.

Unitree Senior Vice President Li Binjie said the industry is shifting from robots that merely "can move" to robots that "can truly work." The collaboration will focus on whole-body motion control, dexterous manipulation, brain–eye–hand coordination, visual navigation, and multi-step decision-making using vision-language models.

At the signing ceremony, Unitree's G1 humanoid robot demonstrated a series of martial arts movements.

Source： IT Home