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| AstroD AD-01 | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Manufacturer | INFIFORCE (ELU.AI) |
| Country of origin | China |
| Year introduced | 2025 |
| Status | Prototype / Pilot |
| Estimated price | ~$100,000 USD |
| Target markets | Industrial, Service, Retail |
| Website | infiforce.cn |
The AstroD AD-01 (also referred to as AstroDroid AD-01) is a general-purpose humanoid robot developed by INFIFORCE (formerly branded as ELU.AI), a Chinese embodied AI company headquartered in Hangzhou. The AD-01 is the flagship model in INFIFORCE's AstroDroid series. It combines a humanoid upper body with a wheeled mobility platform, targeting applications in smart manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and retail environments. The robot is powered by the company's proprietary Hyper-VLA (Vision-Language-Action) foundation model running on an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin computing module, enabling it to perceive its surroundings, understand natural language instructions, and execute physical tasks with approximately 200 millisecond end-to-end latency.[1][2]
INFIFORCE unveiled the AstroDroid AD-01 in 2025 and showcased it at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, where CEO Isabella Bai (Bai Huiyuan) presented the company's vision for embodied intelligence during the panel "Not Quite Human: How Humanoids are Changing Work and Home Life."[3] As of early 2026, the AD-01 remains in an advanced prototype stage with pilot deployments underway.
INFIFORCE, known in Chinese as "Yuanli Wuxian" (原力无限), was founded in 2023 by Bai Huiyuan (Isabella Bai), a former Vice President at Alibaba with a background in artificial intelligence, internet technology, and cloud computing.[4][5] The company's legal entity is registered as Yuanli Wuxian Technology Holdings (Zhejiang) Co., Ltd. (原力无限科技控股（浙江）有限公司). Its headquarters are located in Hangzhou's Alibaba Digital Ecosystem Innovation Park, with additional R&D centers in Shenzhen and Beijing.[3]
The founding team draws heavily from major technology firms and leading Chinese universities. Over 75% of the staff hold master's or doctoral degrees, with team members from institutions including Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Beihang University, Harbin Institute of Technology, and Stanford University. Prior industry experience on the team spans companies such as Alibaba, Huawei, Baidu, Tencent, Geely, and NIO.[5]
Bai Huiyuan has spoken publicly about her motivation for founding the company. In a TEDxXuhui Women Annual Conference speech in March 2025 titled "The Awakening of the Force: The Rise of Embodied Intelligence," she described how a personal tragedy involving inadequate post-operative care for a family member prompted her to explore how AI and robotics could address systemic failures in healthcare and service industries.[6] She has projected that embodied intelligence could generate $2 trillion in global economic value by 2030 and reshape more than ten industries.[6]
In early 2025, ELU.AI announced a brand restructuring. The parent company now operates under three sub-brands, each focused on a different domain:[5]
| Sub-brand | Chinese name | Focus area |
|---|---|---|
| INFIFORCE | 原力无限 | Embodied intelligence robots (AstroDroid, FORCE) |
| LIGHTFORCE | 原力光年 | Industry-specific AI applications and AI Agents |
| UNIFORCE | 原力万象 | AI decision systems and robot "brain" technology |
This structure reflects the company's core strategy of "one brain, multiple bodies, multiple scenarios" (一脑多身多场景), deploying a single unified AI intelligence architecture across diverse robotic platforms and application contexts.[3]
In March 2025, ELU.AI completed a Pre-A funding round of several hundred million RMB. Investors included Liding Capital, Hangzhou Shijie Industrial Investment, Xingtai Capital, and earlier angel investor Chuangshi Partners (Genesis Partners).[5] The company has also been backed by CCV Capital.[6]
As of early 2026, INFIFORCE has accumulated more than 35 invention and utility model patents along with 20 software copyrights. Over 30 additional core technology patents are under application, and the company has stated plans to exceed 100 patents in the future.[3]
INFIFORCE reported that its strategy of deploying a unified AI "brain" into diverse robotic bodies has secured CNY 500 million (approximately USD 71.55 million) worth of commercial orders across the automotive and healthcare sectors as of January 2026.[3] The company's FORCE autonomous charging robots, which entered the market before the AstroDroid, have been deployed by enterprises including Sinopec, Wanda Group, and Intime Department Store. By the end of 2025, cumulative FORCE robot deliveries reached 300 units serving over 90 clients across more than 20 cities, having processed over 200,000 actual charging orders for nearly 100,000 vehicle owners.[7]
The AD-01 employs a hybrid design philosophy that distinguishes it from fully bipedal humanoid robots. Its upper body is a humanoid torso with articulated arms and dexterous hands, while its lower section uses a wheeled base rather than legs. This design choice prioritizes reliable and efficient indoor navigation over the more complex and energy-intensive challenge of bipedal walking.[1][2] The wheeled platform allows the AD-01 to cover ground quickly and stably on flat indoor surfaces, which is particularly advantageous in factory floors, warehouses, and retail settings where terrain is predictable.
This approach places the AD-01 in the growing category of wheeled mobile manipulators, alongside robots such as the Humanoid HMND 01 Alpha and various industrial mobile manipulation platforms. These systems combine the stability, speed, and cost-effectiveness of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) with the dexterous bimanual manipulation capabilities of humanoid upper bodies.[8]
The AD-01 features a total of 43 degrees of freedom across its entire body. Its hands are particularly notable, each possessing 11 DOF with five fingers per hand, enabling dexterous grasping and manipulation tasks. The company describes the upper limbs as "comparable to humans" in terms of dexterity.[2][3] Each hand can handle payloads of up to 3 kg with precise force feedback, allowing the robot to perform tasks ranging from picking and placing objects to more delicate manipulation work.[1]
The robot stands 170 cm tall and weighs 120 kg. It carries an IP42 ingress protection rating, providing basic protection against solid objects larger than 1 mm and dripping water, consistent with its indoor-focused design.[1]
| Category | Specification | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Physical | Height | 170 cm (5 ft 7 in) |
| Physical | Weight | 120 kg (265 lb) |
| Physical | IP rating | IP42 |
| Physical | Total degrees of freedom | 43 |
| Manipulation | DOF per hand | 11 |
| Manipulation | Fingers per hand | 5 |
| Manipulation | Payload capacity | 3 kg (6.6 lb) |
| Mobility | Mobility type | Wheeled base |
| Mobility | Max speed | 0.56 m/s (2.0 km/h; 1.3 mph) |
| Computing | Compute platform | NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin |
| Computing | Operating system | Linux / ROS 2 |
| Computing | AI model | Hyper-VLA (Vision-Language-Action) |
| Computing | End-to-end latency | ~200 ms |
| Power | Battery life | ~2 hours |
| Actuators | Motor type | Brushless DC motors |
| Actuators | Gear technology | Harmonic drive |
| Connectivity | Wireless | WiFi 6, Bluetooth, 5G |
| Connectivity | Wired | Ethernet |
| Connectivity | ROS compatible | Yes |
| Software | Cloud-updatable | Yes |
| Software | Modular architecture | Yes |
The Hyper-VLA (Hyper Vision-Language-Action) model is INFIFORCE's proprietary end-to-end multimodal AI system. It establishes what the company describes as a complete closed loop of "Perception, Cognition, Decision, and Execution." The model enables the AD-01 to understand natural language commands, perceive and interpret changing visual scenes in real time, and autonomously generate appropriate physical actions.[2][3]
The name "Hyper-VLA" places it within the broader category of Vision-Language-Action models, an emerging class of AI architectures designed to integrate visual perception, language understanding, and physical action generation into unified systems for robotic control. VLA models represent a significant advance over traditional robotic control pipelines that treat perception, planning, and execution as separate modules. By processing all three modalities in an end-to-end fashion, VLA models can achieve faster response times and more fluid task execution.[9]
INFIFORCE claims its Hyper-VLA model is the world's first end-to-end embodied intelligence large model to integrate causal reasoning capabilities. The system targets approximately 200 millisecond latency from perception to action, enabling near-real-time responses to dynamic environments.[2]
Alongside Hyper-VLA, INFIFORCE has developed a proprietary Causal World Model. This system enables robots to understand physical laws, predict outcomes of actions, and reason about cause-and-effect relationships in their environment. According to the company, the Causal World Model addresses the "hallucination" and safety issues present in many current AI robotics systems, where robots may take actions based on flawed or incomplete world models.[3]
At CES 2026, Bai Huiyuan stated: "A robot without causal understanding of the world is just a sophisticated puppet." She emphasized that physical-world data, not internet text, would define the next major advancement in AI, positioning INFIFORCE's approach to causal reasoning as a key differentiator.[3][10]
The AD-01 runs on the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin computing platform, a system-on-module designed for edge AI and autonomous machines. The Jetson AGX Orin delivers up to 275 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second) of AI compute performance, incorporating a 12-core Arm Cortex-A78AE CPU and a 2,048-core NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPU. It supports up to 64 GB of LPDDR5 memory and provides hardware acceleration for deep learning inference, computer vision, and multi-sensor fusion.[11] The platform's support for PCIe Gen4 and multiple camera lanes makes it well-suited for the AD-01's multi-sensor perception system.
A central design principle at INFIFORCE is the separation of the "brain" (AI intelligence layer) from the "body" (physical robot platform). The company's Hyper-VLA and Causal World Model serve as a unified cognitive system that can be deployed across different robot form factors. This same AI architecture powers both the AstroDroid humanoid series and the FORCE autonomous charging robots.[3]
The company's distributed multi-Agent decision system reportedly achieves 87% faster response speed compared to conventional approaches, while its neural-symbolic hybrid reasoning engine performs three times better than the industry average, according to internal benchmarks.[5]
The AstroDroid AD-01 sits within a broader product portfolio that INFIFORCE has developed using its shared AI platform.
The AD-01 is the flagship model in the AstroDroid line. INFIFORCE has announced that the series is expanding to include additional sizes and configurations to address a wider range of general-purpose application scenarios.[3] All models in the series share the same Hyper-VLA intelligence backbone and are designed for modularity and cloud-based software updates.
The FORCE robot is INFIFORCE's commercially deployed product, a fully autonomous mobile charging robot for electric vehicles. It introduces what the company calls a "robot finds vehicle" paradigm, reversing the traditional model where drivers must locate available charging stations. The FORCE robot features L4-level autonomous driving capabilities and supports multi-robot collaborative scheduling, allowing fleets of FORCE units to coordinate across large properties and parking facilities.[3][7]
FORCE robots have been deployed at locations including Hangzhou East Railway Station, Hangzhou West Railway Station, Intime Department Store, and Wanda Plaza, integrated directly into daily operations to handle real charging services. By the end of 2025, the cumulative fleet had reached 300 delivered units.[7]
INFIFORCE also produces modular Hyper-Components, which are core execution and perception modules that can be integrated into various robotic platforms. The most prominent component is the HyperArm, a lightweight, high-degree-of-freedom bionic arm designed for precise execution of AI-generated commands. The HyperArm serves as a bridge between the virtual intelligence layer and physical-world tasks, and its integrated hardware-software design is optimized for embodied AI applications.[3]
In July 2025, INFIFORCE launched AI Agent LEMMA, an AI agent system targeted at the energy sector. This product extends the company's AI capabilities beyond physical robotics into software-based intelligent agent applications.[4]
The AD-01 is designed for 24/7 operation in structured indoor environments. Its primary target applications include:
| Sector | Use cases |
|---|---|
| Smart manufacturing | Assembly assistance, quality inspection, parts handling, machine tending |
| Warehousing and logistics | Order picking, inventory management, package handling |
| Retail | Shelf stocking, customer service, store maintenance |
| Healthcare | Patient assistance, supply delivery, facility management |
| Automotive | Production line assistance, component handling |
The wheeled base design makes the AD-01 particularly suited for environments with flat, predictable surfaces. Its 11-DOF hands allow it to handle a range of objects, though the 3 kg payload limit restricts it to lighter manipulation tasks. The combination of natural language understanding via Hyper-VLA and real-time visual perception allows the robot to interpret verbal instructions and adapt to changing conditions on the factory floor or retail space.[1][2]
The AD-01 enters a rapidly expanding Chinese humanoid robot market. In 2025, sales of humanoid robots in China surpassed 10,000 units, representing a 125% year-on-year increase. The leading manufacturers by shipment volume included Agibot, Unitree Robotics, UBTECH, Leju Robotics, EngineAI, and Fourier Intelligence.[12]
At approximately $100,000, the AD-01 occupies the mid-range of the humanoid robot price spectrum. Unitree Robotics disrupted the market in July 2025 with the launch of its R1 humanoid at just $5,900, while Unitree shipped over 5,500 humanoid units in 2025 alone and targeted 20,000 shipments for 2026.[12] At the higher end, the Fourier Intelligence GR-2 targets a price range of $150,000 to $170,000.[13]
The AD-01's wheeled-base hybrid design differentiates it from the majority of competitors, which use bipedal locomotion. This design choice reduces mechanical complexity and improves reliability for indoor applications, but limits the robot's ability to navigate stairs, uneven terrain, or outdoor environments. Similar wheeled mobile manipulator approaches have been adopted by other companies, including Humanoid Ltd with the HMND 01 Alpha and various industrial mobile manipulation systems.[8]
INFIFORCE and its products have received several recognitions:
The AstroD AD-01 is priced at approximately $100,000 USD and was in pilot deployment status as of early 2026. The robot is designed to be modular, ROS-compatible, and cloud-updatable, allowing INFIFORCE to push software improvements and new capabilities to deployed units over time.[1][2] The company has indicated that pilot programs are focused on manufacturing, logistics, and retail customers, with broader commercial availability expected as the AstroDroid series expands to additional form factors.