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| Booster Robotics | |
|---|---|
| Chinese name | 北京加速进化科技有限公司 |
| Type | Private |
| Industry | Robotics, Artificial Intelligence |
| Founded | June 2023 |
| Founder & CEO | Cheng Hao (程昊) |
| Headquarters | Beijing, China |
| Products | Booster T1, Booster K1 |
| Total funding | ~$70 million (Series A cumulative, as of November 2025) |
| Employees | ~45 (2025) |
| Website | booster.tech |
Booster Robotics (Chinese: 加速进化, literally "Accelerated Evolution") is a Chinese humanoid robot company headquartered in Beijing. Founded in June 2023 by Cheng Hao, a Tsinghua University alumnus and former ByteDance executive, the company designs and manufactures affordable humanoid robots for research, education, and competitive robotics. Booster Robotics positions itself as a developer-first platform company, emphasizing open-source software, comprehensive SDKs, and ROS 2 compatibility across its product lineup.
As of early 2026, Booster Robotics has shipped over 700 humanoid robots to more than 200 clients across 20 countries, including over 70 universities and research institutions. The company's flagship Booster T1 is the preferred platform of over 50 top global robotics teams and has powered championship victories at both RoboCup 2025 and IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2024. Overseas markets account for more than half of the company's sales, making Booster one of the few Chinese humanoid robotics companies with significant international commercial traction.[1][2]
Booster Robotics was established in June 2023 (some sources cite August 2023 as the formal registration date) in Beijing's Haidian district, close to the Zhongguancun technology ecosystem. The founding team drew heavily from the Tsinghua Robot Control Lab and the Tsinghua Hephaestus RoboCup Team, bringing over two decades of accumulated experience in humanoid robot development. This heritage in competitive robotics shaped the company's product philosophy from the outset, with an emphasis on reliable locomotion, robust hardware, and real-world performance under demanding conditions.[3]
The company's first prototype, designated BR001, served as an internal testbed. By December 2023, the team had progressed to the BR002, which featured upgraded core components including a redesigned main controller and improved joint actuators.[4]
On April 18, 2024, Boston Dynamics unveiled its new electric Atlas robot with a dramatic video showing the humanoid performing a rotating stand-up motion. Just one week later, Booster Robotics released footage of the BR002 replicating the same motion. The company claimed to have achieved this in just three days of development. The video accumulated over two million views across social media platforms and brought international attention to the young startup.[4][5]
The BR002 featured three 360-degree rotating joints at the hip, an engineering innovation that, combined with custom control algorithms, allowed the robot to perform complex movements including horizontal and vertical splits. While the BR002 was not intended for commercial sale, it served as a powerful technology demonstrator that validated the team's core competencies in actuator design and motion control.[4]
The production-ready Booster T1 was officially unveiled at the World Robot Conference (WRC) 2024 in Beijing in August 2024. Unlike the BR002, the T1 was designed from the ground up as a commercially available development platform targeting the research and education market. The robot stands 118 cm tall, weighs approximately 30 kg, and features up to 41 degrees of freedom depending on configuration. It is powered by an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin GPU delivering 200 TOPS of AI computing performance.[1][6]
Booster Robotics achieved mass production of the T1 by October 2024 and delivered its first 100 units by March 2025. The rapid transition from prototype to mass production was notable in an industry where many competitors remained in the prototype or limited-production stage.[5]
On December 10, 2024, the RoboCup Federation (RCF) announced an official partnership with Booster Robotics, Fourier Intelligence, and Unitree Robotics. The three companies became the first Chinese robotics firms to enter the RoboCup ecosystem as official league partners. The partnership aimed to promote humanoid robotics research, lower barriers to competition entry through discounted hardware access, and increase participation in future RoboCup events.[7]
RoboCup President Prof. Ubbo Visser stated that the collaboration would "enable significantly faster and more impactful progress than any of us could achieve independently." Cheng Hao described the partnership as a step toward "accelerating progress in robotic soccer" in line with RoboCup's long-standing 2050 goal: fielding a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots capable of defeating the human FIFA World Cup champions under official rules.[7]
At the "2025 Booster Robotics Ecosystem Conference" held on October 30, 2025, at the National Speed Skating Oval ("The Ice Ribbon") in Beijing, the company unveiled the Booster K1 and launched the Booster Agents software platform. The K1, a smaller and more affordable humanoid priced from $4,999, targets the education, STEM, and entry-level developer markets. The K1 Geek Edition sold out within 20 minutes of its debut on major Chinese e-commerce platforms, with dealer agreements exceeding 1,000 units at launch.[2][8]
At the same event, the company announced its "Hundred Cities, Ten Thousand Schools" initiative and the "Voyage Plan" developer support program, signaling a strategic shift toward building a broader ecosystem beyond hardware sales.[8]
In November 2025, Booster Robotics closed an additional funding round exceeding $14 million led by IDG Capital, with participation from E-Town Capital and existing investors including Source Code Capital, InnoAngel Fund, Shenzhen Capital Group, and Bohua Capital. This brought the company's cumulative Series A funding to approximately $70 million. Proceeds were earmarked for new-generation product R&D, large-scale manufacturing, delivery expansion, and ecosystem platform development.[9][10]
Cheng Hao (程昊) holds both a bachelor's and a master's degree from the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, where he studied under Professor Mingguo Zhao, a leading figure in Chinese humanoid robotics research. Cheng was a member of the Tsinghua Hephaestus RoboCup Team during his time at the university, giving him direct experience with competitive humanoid robot development.[3]
Before founding Booster Robotics, Cheng pursued a career in technology entrepreneurship and product management. He created Zhaoxi Calendar, a productivity application that was subsequently acquired by ByteDance. Following the acquisition, Cheng served as Vice President of Product for Lark (飞书), ByteDance's enterprise collaboration platform. In 2023, he returned to his robotics roots and established Booster Robotics with the stated mission of "promoting productivity change by creating humanoid robot products and uniting global developers."[3][11]
The founding engineering team consists primarily of graduates from the Tsinghua Robot Control Lab and the Tsinghua Hephaestus RoboCup Team. According to the company, these individuals collectively possess over 20 years of technical experience in humanoid robotics, spanning actuator design, motion control, locomotion algorithms, and competitive robot engineering. As of 2025, the company employed approximately 45 people.[3][12]
The Booster T1 is the company's flagship humanoid robot and primary revenue driver. Designed as an open-source development platform, it targets university research laboratories, competitive robotics teams, and developers working on embodied AI applications.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Height | 118 cm (1,200 mm) |
| Weight | ~30 kg (with battery) |
| DOF (base) | 23 |
| DOF (max) | 41 (with dexterous hands) |
| GPU | NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin 32GB (200 TOPS) |
| CPU (Standard) | Intel Core i7-1370P (14-core) |
| Depth camera | Intel RealSense D455 (RGBD) |
| Walking speed | 0.5+ m/s |
| Battery life (walking) | ~2 hours |
| Stand-up time | Under 1 second |
| Price | $29,800 (Basic) to $33,949 (Standard) |
| Release year | 2024 |
The T1 is available in four configurations: Basic (23 DOF, Orin GPU only), Standard (23 DOF, adds Intel i7 CPU), Gripper variant (31 DOF), and Dexterous Hands variant (41 DOF). All configurations include the full open-source SDK, ROS 2 Humble compatibility, Intel RealSense D455 depth camera, 9-axis IMU, circular six-microphone array, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and simulation support for NVIDIA Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, and Webots.[1][6]
The T1 is available for worldwide shipping through authorized distributors including Generation Robots (exclusive European distributor), RobotShop, AltHumans, and K-Robotics.[6][13]
The Booster K1 is a smaller, more affordable humanoid robot unveiled in October 2025. It targets the education, STEM learning, and entry-level developer markets as a complement to the research-focused T1.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Height | 95 cm |
| Weight | 19.5 kg |
| Degrees of freedom | 22 |
| Depth camera | 3D depth camera |
| IMU | 9-axis |
| Microphone array | Circular 6-microphone |
| Connectivity | WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, Gigabit Ethernet |
| Software support | Python, C++, ROS/ROS 2 |
| Portability | Fits in a standard suitcase |
The K1 is offered in three editions with different computing capabilities and price points:
| Edition | AI Computing (TOPS) | Battery Life (Active) | Warranty | Price (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K1 Geek | 48 | ~30 minutes | 3 months | $4,999 - $5,999 |
| K1 EDU | 40 - 117 | ~80 minutes | 12 months | ~$12,500 |
| K1 Pro | 200 | Extended | 12 months | ~$15,000 - $18,000 |
All K1 variants share identical 22-DOF mechanical hardware but differ in computing power, battery capacity, and warranty coverage. The hardware has been validated through 30 hours of continuous 500N impact testing, reflecting its design for the physical demands of competition environments. The K1 won both first and second place in the KidSize category at RoboCup 2025.[8][14]
The BR002 was Booster Robotics' second prototype, developed in late 2023 and publicly demonstrated in April 2024. It was never commercialized but served as a critical technology demonstrator. Its three 360-degree rotating hip joints and ability to replicate Boston Dynamics Atlas movements brought the company significant media attention and validated its actuator and control technology.[4][5]
Booster Robotics has raised approximately $70 million in cumulative funding across multiple rounds as of November 2025.[9][10]
| Round | Date | Amount | Lead Investor(s) | Notable Co-Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-A | September 2024 | Over 100 million RMB (~$14M) | Source Code Capital | InnoAngel Fund, Bian Era Technology, CMBC International, Zhongguancun Science City, iCANX Fund |
| Series A | June 2025 | ~$13.9M | Shenzhen Capital Group | Jinding Capital, Source Code Capital, InnoAngel Fund |
| Series A+ | July 2025 | Undisclosed (100M+ RMB) | Beijing Robot Industry Investment Fund | Beijing AI Industry Investment Fund, Bohua Capital |
| Additional Round | November 2025 | Over $14M | IDG Capital | E-Town Capital, Source Code Capital, InnoAngel Fund, Shenzhen Capital Group, Bohua Capital |
Yibo Capital served as the financial advisor across multiple rounds. The company generates revenue through hardware sales (T1 and K1 robots), competition-related intellectual property, educational course offerings, and sponsorships. The K1 launch in October 2025 represented a significant expansion of the company's addressable market, with dealer agreements exceeding 1,000 units at launch.[9][10][15]
Booster Robotics differentiates itself from competitors through a comprehensive open-source software ecosystem that extends well beyond basic hardware SDKs.
The core SDK provides both high-level and low-level APIs for robot control. The high-level API offers pre-built motion commands (walking, turning, standing), allowing researchers to focus on perception and planning without implementing low-level motor control. The low-level API provides direct joint-level and sensor-level access for custom locomotion research.
The SDK supports both C++ and Python (via pybind11 bindings, installable with pip install booster_robotics_sdk_python). It requires Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and supports both aarch64 and x86_64 architectures. The SDK is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 and hosted on GitHub under the BoosterRobotics organization.[16]
Booster Gym is an open-source, end-to-end reinforcement learning framework for humanoid robot locomotion, published as an academic paper on arXiv in June 2025. It covers the complete training-to-deployment pipeline, including customizable RL algorithm configurations, domain randomization, reward function design, and sim-to-real transfer. The framework uses NVIDIA Isaac Gym as its primary training environment and has demonstrated successful policy transfer to real T1 hardware for omnidirectional walking and terrain adaptation.[17]
Booster Train is an Isaac Lab-based RL training framework extending the company's reinforcement learning capabilities to NVIDIA's newer simulation platform. Booster Deploy is a lightweight deployment framework enabling the same policy code to run in both simulation and on real robots, simplifying the sim-to-real transfer process.[16]
Launched in October 2025 alongside the K1, Booster Agents is a software platform that allows K1 robots to host diverse intelligent agent roles. Users can deploy pre-built agents (such as dance performers, soccer players, or tutoring assistants) or develop and share custom Agent applications. The platform represents the company's vision of humanoid robots as "universal bodies" for AI agents, analogous to how personal computers serve as general-purpose platforms for software.[8]
Booster provides a complete open-source RoboCup demonstration codebase (BoosterRobotics/robocup_demo) that enables T1 and K1 robots to autonomously play robot soccer. The demo includes a vision system for perception, a brain module for decision-making, and a game controller interface that converts RoboCup GameController data packets into ROS 2 topic messages.[16]
All Booster robots are compatible with three major simulation platforms:
| Simulator | Developer | Primary Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA Isaac Sim | NVIDIA | GPU-accelerated physics for large-scale RL training |
| MuJoCo | Google DeepMind | Fast, accurate physics for locomotion research |
| Webots | Cyberbotics | Open-source simulator popular in education |
The simulation support enables a sim-to-real workflow standard in modern robotics research, where policies are trained and validated in simulation before deployment on physical hardware.[16]
Booster Robotics' competition record has become a central element of its marketing and credibility strategy, directly validating its hardware and software for demanding real-world use.
At RoboCup 2025, held in July 2025, Booster robots achieved a historic sweep across multiple categories of the Humanoid League:
| Category | 1st Place | 2nd Place | Robot Used |
|---|---|---|---|
| AdultSize | Tsinghua Hephaestus (China) | China Agricultural University Mountain and Sea (China) | Booster T1 |
| KidSize | HTWK (Germany) | Tsinghua TH-MOS (China) | Booster K1 |
The AdultSize final concluded with the Tsinghua Hephaestus team defeating China Agricultural University's Mountain and Sea team 5:3. This marked the first time a Chinese team won the AdultSize championship in RoboCup's 28-year history. The Hephaestus team dominated the tournament with multiple clean-sheet victories, including 16:0, 9:0, and 12:0 wins over competitors such as UT Austin Villa from the United States. Over 10 international teams from countries including Brazil, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, Italy, Thailand, and Indonesia used the T1 at the competition.[2][18]
At the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, held November 22-24, 2024, the Booster T1 won first place in both the Speed Competition and the Obstacle Avoidance and Door Opening Challenge. These were the T1's first major international competition victories, achieved just months after mass production began.[3]
Booster robots also earned medals at the World Humanoid Robotics Games in 2025, further establishing the platform's competitive credentials across multiple international venues.[3]
The December 2024 partnership between the RoboCup Federation and Booster Robotics, Fourier Intelligence, and Unitree Robotics was a milestone in the relationship between Chinese robotics manufacturers and the international competition community.
The collaboration operates along several dimensions:
| Dimension | Description |
|---|---|
| Research promotion | The three companies use their business networks to fund and commercialize RoboCup-linked research and technology |
| Competition access | Exclusive discounted hardware access for participating RoboCup teams, lowering barriers to entry |
| Communication | Shared marketing platforms to build awareness of robotics research and applications |
| RoboCup 2026 preparation | Targeted support for increased participation at RoboCup 2026 in Incheon, South Korea |
The partnership aligns with RoboCup's founding vision: by the middle of the 21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players should defeat the human FIFA World Cup champion team under official FIFA rules.[7]
Fourier Intelligence CEO Alex Gu described the partnership as a "powerful inspiration" for humanoid robotics exploration, while Unitree CEO Xingxing Wang stated it would "significantly advance challenges like robotic soccer." The joint effort reflects a broader trend in the humanoid robotics industry toward collaboration between hardware manufacturers and competition organizers to accelerate the field's development.[7]
Booster Robotics operates in an increasingly crowded market for developer-focused humanoid robots, with most of its direct competitors also based in China.
| Company | Robot | Height | DOF | AI Compute | Starting Price | Units Shipped (2025) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Booster Robotics | T1 | 118 cm | 23-41 | 200 TOPS | ~$29,800 | 700+ |
| Unitree | G1 | 127 cm | 23-43 | 100 TOPS | ~$16,000 | 5,500+ (all humanoids) |
| Booster Robotics | K1 | 95 cm | 22 | 48-200 TOPS | $4,999 | Included in 700+ total |
| Unitree | R1 | N/A | N/A | N/A | ~$5,900 | Launched July 2025 |
The T1's most direct competitor is the Unitree G1. The T1 holds advantages in AI computing power (200 vs. 100 TOPS), lighter weight (30 vs. 35+ kg), higher knee torque (130 vs. 120 N*m), integrated audio hardware (six-microphone array), and faster stand-up time (under one second). The G1 counters with significantly higher walking speed (up to 2 m/s vs. 0.5+ m/s) and a substantially lower starting price ($16,000 vs. $29,800). Unitree's volume lead is significant; the company reported shipping 5,500 humanoid units in 2025 and has targeted 20,000 units for 2026.[1][6][19]
Booster's K1 competes against both Unitree's R1 and SoftBank Robotics' NAO in the education and entry-level segment. The K1's competition-proven pedigree (RoboCup KidSize champion) and modern architecture give it advantages over the aging NAO platform, while its open SDK and simulation support differentiate it from entry-level alternatives.[14]
Booster occupies what industry analysts describe as the "prosumer" segment of humanoid robotics: more capable than hobby or education-grade platforms but accessible enough for university research budgets that cannot justify six-figure industrial robots. The company's two-product strategy (T1 for advanced research, K1 for education) allows it to address multiple market tiers simultaneously.
Full-size humanoid platforms from companies like Figure AI, Tesla, and Boston Dynamics target industrial and commercial applications at significantly higher price points and larger form factors. Booster does not compete directly in this segment, instead focusing on the research and education niche where developer experience and software ecosystem matter as much as raw hardware capability.[5]
Booster's overseas sales exceeding 50% of total revenue is notable in the Chinese humanoid robotics market, where most competitors remain focused on domestic sales or are still in pilot stages. This international traction, combined with the competition validation, has positioned Booster as a credible player despite being younger and smaller than competitors like Unitree or UBTECH.[9]
Announced at the October 2025 Ecosystem Conference, the "Hundred Cities, Ten Thousand Schools" (百城万校) initiative targets partnerships with over ten thousand educational institutions globally within three years. The program aims to promote widespread adoption of robotics education by providing a systematic, full-chain education and competition solution centered on the K1. The curriculum covers the complete cycle from classroom instruction and laboratory experimentation to competition participation and practical application.[8]
Booster has launched robot soccer courses that have been adopted by Chinese high schools and universities, using competitive robotics as a vehicle for teaching programming, control theory, and computer vision.[2]
The Voyage Plan is a developer support program offering free access to integrated development tools and video tutorials, open-source upgrades for the Booster GYM simulation platform and RoboCup core algorithm demos, and a seed investment fund for teams developing Agent applications on the K1 platform.[8]
| Event | Location | Date | Activities |
|---|---|---|---|
| World Robot Conference 2024 | Beijing, China | August 2024 | Official T1 launch |
| IEEE-RAS Humanoids 2024 | Nancy, France | November 2024 | Won Speed and Obstacle Avoidance competitions |
| CES 2025 | Las Vegas, USA | January 2025 | Walking, push-ups, dancing, kung fu demonstrations |
| RoboCup 2025 | Salvador, Brazil | July 2025 | AdultSize and KidSize championship victories |
| Booster Ecosystem Conference | Beijing, China | October 2025 | K1 launch, Booster Agents, Hundred Cities Ten Thousand Schools |
| IREX 2025 | Tokyo, Japan | 2025 | Product showcase |
| CES 2026 | Las Vegas, USA | January 2026 | K1 Geek at Qualcomm booth; multitasking demos |
Booster Robotics has articulated a long-term vision centered on the idea that humanoid robots will become the "personal computers" of the AI era. In this framing, the physical robot serves as a general-purpose hardware platform (analogous to a PC), while AI agents running on the robot provide specialized functionality (analogous to software applications). The Booster Agents platform, launched with the K1, represents the company's first concrete step toward this vision, enabling users to deploy, develop, and share AI agent applications on a standardized humanoid platform.[8]
The company's tagline, "Made for Developers, Made for Champions," reflects its dual focus on serving the developer community and proving its technology through competitive success.[1]