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| Developer | Lanxin Robotics (Hangzhou Lanxin Technology Co., Ltd.) |
| Type | Humanoid robot (omnidirectional wheeled base) |
| Introduced | 2025 |
| Country of origin | China |
| Height | 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) |
| Dimensions | 580 x 480 x 1700 mm |
| Mobility | Four-wheel omnidirectional drive |
| Navigation | 3D Laser SLAM + Panoramic RGB-D |
| Arm joints | 7 per arm |
| Gripping payload | 5 kg |
| Max speed | 1.2 m/s (4.3 km/h) |
| Battery life | 4 to 6 hours |
| Status | In production |
| Website | lanxinrobotics.com |
The Lanxin VB2 is a humanoid robot developed by Lanxin Robotics (formally Hangzhou Lanxin Technology Co., Ltd.), a Chinese robotics company headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Introduced in 2025, the VB2 is the third humanoid platform in Lanxin's product lineup, following the wheeled VersaBot VB-1 and the bipedal VB1-I. The VB2 combines a humanoid upper body with a four-wheel omnidirectional drive base and uses a hybrid navigation approach that pairs 3D Laser SLAM with a Panoramic RGB-D depth vision system. This represents a notable departure from the "pure vision" philosophy that defined Lanxin's earlier humanoid models, reflecting the company's pragmatic strategy of matching navigation technology to deployment requirements rather than adhering to a single sensing paradigm.
Designed for embodied AI research, industrial logistics, and factory automation, the VB2 features 7-joint arms capable of carrying 5 kg per hand, a maximum speed of 1.2 m/s, and a battery life of 4 to 6 hours. Lanxin positions the VB2 as a practical platform for customers who need capable humanoid manipulation combined with reliable, high-precision indoor mobility.
Lanxin Robotics was founded in 2016 by Dr. Gao Yong, who holds a doctorate in pattern recognition and artificial intelligence from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Before founding Lanxin, Dr. Gao worked at Ricoh Japan and the Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute on computer vision products. The company's core founding team includes researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fudan University, and Zhejiang University, with approximately 50% of staff dedicated to research and development.[1][2]
Headquartered at China Artificial Intelligence Town in Hangzhou, Lanxin was the first company in China to develop 3D visual perception technology specifically for mobile robots and achieve large-scale commercial deployment. The company operates under an organizational framework it describes as "one body and two wings": the main body is mobile robot systems, while the two wings are the MRDVS sensor division and the VMR robot development division.[3]
By 2024, Lanxin had accumulated 156 national patents, including 41 invention patents. The company reported a compound annual revenue growth rate exceeding 80% from 2019 to 2024. In 2022, Lanxin was listed among Hangzhou's quasi-unicorn companies, and in 2024, it was recognized as a national-level specialized and new "little giant" enterprise by the Chinese government.[2][4] Notable clients include Huawei, ZTE, BYD, Midea, Toshiba, Foxconn, and COMAC, with deployments spanning the 3C electronics, semiconductor, photovoltaic, battery, automotive, and packaging industries.[1][5]
Lanxin maintains international operations through a Japan office, Lanxin Robotics Japan Co., Ltd., located in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture.[6] The company operates two intelligent manufacturing bases: one in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, and another in Gui'an New District, Guizhou Province.[3]
Lanxin Robotics has completed multiple rounds of financing since its founding, raising a total of $15.83 million in disclosed funding through its Series C round according to Crunchbase. Key investors include Tencent, Kunpeng Capital, Lanchi Ventures, Advantech Capital, Envision Capital, and Blue Horizon Capital.[7][8]
On May 7, 2025, Lanxin announced the completion of its C+ financing round, led by Kunpeng Fund, with the total amount reported to be in the hundreds of millions of yuan. The company stated that the new capital would fund three priorities: deepening research into 3D vision sensors, advancing AI capabilities for humanoid robots, and upgrading the global supply chain and service system across its two manufacturing bases.[3]
Lanxin has placed an initial public offering (IPO) on its corporate agenda and expects to pursue listing as what it has described as the "first stock of 3D visual perception robots" in China.[3][8]
At the heart of Lanxin's product ecosystem is the proprietary LX-MRDVS (Lanxin Mobile Robot Deep Vision System), a 3D visual perception platform that enables mobile robots to navigate, avoid obstacles, and manipulate objects using depth vision. Developed over five years of technical refinement, the system was fully deployed across Lanxin's own mobile robot products by 2021 and was selected into Zhejiang Province's "Pioneer" and "Leading Goose" R&D and key research plans in 2023.[9]
The MRDVS sensor lineup is organized into four product series:[2]
| Series | Function | Key specification |
|---|---|---|
| S-Series | Obstacle detection | Multi-modal identification of suspended and low-lying obstacles |
| M-Series | High-precision docking | 0.1 to 1.5 m working range |
| V-Series | Navigation | 12 m range with proprietary top-view technology |
| H-Series | Structured light cameras | Plus or minus 0.1 mm measurement accuracy |
Dr. Gao Yong has drawn an analogy between Lanxin's vision-only approach and Tesla's sensor strategy evolution in autonomous driving, arguing that deep vision technology will replace laser-based methods in many contexts by providing greater flexibility and intelligence at lower cost.[2] However, the VB2's adoption of 3D Laser SLAM alongside vision suggests that Lanxin recognizes the value of sensor fusion for applications demanding the highest localization precision.
The VB2 is the third humanoid robot in Lanxin's lineup. Each model reflects a different design philosophy and target use case, progressing from a wheeled logistics assistant to a bipedal research platform and then to an omnidirectional industrial workhorse.
The VersaBot VB-1 was officially launched on August 23, 2024, at the 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing. Lanxin introduced it as the world's first "pure vision" humanoid robot, meaning it relies entirely on RGB-D cameras for navigation without any LiDAR sensors. The VB-1 uses a wheeled mobile base combined with a humanoid upper body featuring dual arms and gripper-style hands. Standing 1.6 meters tall with a 2-meter arm span, it was designed primarily for manufacturing logistics, material handling, and smart factory applications. The robot's navigation camera provides a 270 x 70 degree field of view with a 30-meter sensing range, and its chest-mounted manipulation camera achieves plus or minus 0.1 mm recognition accuracy at 350 mm distance.[10][11]
The VB1-I represents an improved iteration of the VersaBot platform. Unlike the wheeled VB-1, the VB1-I is a full-scale bipedal humanoid robot that walks on two legs with dual arms for manipulation. Standing approximately 1.65 meters tall with 42 degrees of freedom, it maintains the pure vision navigation approach but shifts the primary focus toward experimentation and development. The VB1-I supports logistics trials, factory simulations, and embodied AI research, with a modular design that allows for future upgrades and long-term research use.[12]
The VB2 takes yet another approach, combining a humanoid upper body with a four-wheel omnidirectional drive base. At 1.7 meters tall, it is the largest model in the lineup. The VB2 introduces 3D Laser SLAM navigation alongside its Panoramic RGB-D vision system, departing from the pure vision approach of its predecessors. With 7-joint arms and a 5 kg gripping payload, it offers significantly greater manipulation capability than the VB-1's 2 kg single-hand capacity. The VB2 is designed to bridge the gap between research experimentation and practical industrial deployment.
The VB2 measures 580 x 480 x 1700 mm and features a humanoid upper body mounted on a four-wheel omnidirectional drive platform. This hybrid form factor prioritizes stability, maneuverability, and continuous operation over the terrain versatility that bipedal locomotion would provide. The omnidirectional wheel system enables the robot to move in any direction (forward, backward, sideways, and diagonal) and rotate on the spot without needing to turn its chassis, a significant advantage in confined factory aisles and crowded warehouse environments.[6]
The ground clearance of 35 mm is sufficient for smooth indoor surfaces such as factory floors and warehouse concrete, while the rotation diameter of 760 mm indicates a compact turning envelope suitable for operating between machinery and storage racks. The operating height range of 0.4 to 2 meters, achieved through a vertical lifting mechanism in the torso, allows the VB2 to reach workstations and shelves at various heights, from low conveyor belts to elevated storage positions.[6]
The four-wheel omnidirectional drive system is one of the VB2's defining features and a key differentiator from both the differential-drive VB-1 and the bipedal VB1-I. Omnidirectional wheeled mobile robots use specially designed wheels (typically Mecanum wheels or Swedish wheels) that allow independent control of each wheel's speed and direction, enabling holonomic motion in the plane.[13]
Compared to differential drive, omnidirectional drive offers several practical advantages for indoor industrial settings:[14]
Compared to bipedal locomotion, the wheeled platform offers greater energy efficiency, longer operating times, inherent stability without active balance control, and lower mechanical complexity. These advantages come at the cost of the inability to climb stairs or traverse highly uneven terrain, but for the structured indoor environments where the VB2 is intended to operate, the trade-off strongly favors wheels.[14][15]
The VB2 uses 3D Laser SLAM as its primary navigation method, supplemented by a Panoramic RGB-D Depth Vision System. This hybrid sensor approach represents a significant evolution from the pure-vision navigation used in the VB-1 and VB1-I.
3D Laser SLAM uses LiDAR sensors to construct precise three-dimensional maps of the environment by measuring distances to surrounding objects with laser pulses. The resulting 3D point cloud data enables the robot to build highly accurate geometric models of its surroundings for localization and path planning. Laser SLAM offers several advantages over vision-only approaches:[16][17]
The Panoramic RGB-D depth vision system complements the laser SLAM by providing rich visual information including color and texture data, object classification capabilities, and semantic understanding of the environment. This fusion of LiDAR precision with visual richness follows a broader industry trend toward multi-sensor navigation, which is widely regarded as the most robust approach for autonomous robot operation in complex environments.[16]
The shift from pure vision to hybrid navigation in the VB2 suggests that Lanxin's deployment experience with the VB-1 and VB1-I revealed scenarios where vision-only navigation was insufficient, particularly in environments with challenging lighting, low-texture surfaces, or requirements for the highest localization accuracy.
The VB2 features dual arms, each with 7 joints (7 degrees of freedom per arm), providing the kinematic flexibility needed for complex manipulation tasks. The 7-DOF configuration matches the degrees of freedom of a human arm, enabling the robot to reach target positions from multiple approach angles and navigate around obstacles in its workspace.
Each arm supports a gripping payload of 5 kg, a substantial improvement over the VB-1's 2 kg single-hand capacity. This increased payload enables the VB2 to handle a wider range of industrial objects, including heavier components, packaged goods, and tooling. The arms are designed for tasks such as loading and unloading, pick-and-place operations, sorting, and material transfer between workstations.[6]
Lanxin describes the VB2 as featuring a "Multimodal AI Interaction Hub," which serves as the robot's interface for human-robot communication and task coordination. While detailed specifications of this system have not been fully disclosed, multimodal interaction in the context of service and industrial robots typically encompasses multiple input and output channels: voice recognition and synthesis for spoken commands and feedback, visual perception for gesture recognition, and digital interfaces for remote monitoring and task assignment.[6]
The inclusion of a dedicated interaction hub reflects the VB2's positioning as a collaborative platform that operates alongside human workers rather than in fully isolated automation cells. In factory and logistics environments, the ability to receive verbal instructions, acknowledge tasks, and communicate status information is increasingly important for practical human-robot collaboration.
The VB2 incorporates what Lanxin calls "Long-lasting Intelligent Power Management," achieving a battery life of 4 to 6 hours on a single charge. This is a significant operational parameter for industrial deployment, where robots must sustain multi-hour shifts without interruption. The range of 4 to 6 hours likely reflects variation based on task intensity, with lighter navigation tasks consuming less power than continuous manipulation under load.[6]
For comparison, many bipedal humanoid robots achieve battery lives of only 1 to 2 hours due to the high energy demands of active balance control and leg actuation. The VB2's wheeled platform contributes directly to its extended battery life by eliminating the continuous power draw required for bipedal balance.
The following table summarizes the VB2's verified technical specifications based on manufacturer disclosures.
| Category | Parameter | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Physical | Height | 1700 mm (1.7 m / 5 ft 7 in) |
| Physical | Width | 480 mm |
| Physical | Depth | 580 mm |
| Physical | Ground clearance | 35 mm |
| Mobility | Drive type | Four-wheel omnidirectional |
| Mobility | Maximum speed | 1.2 m/s (4.3 km/h / 2.7 mph) |
| Mobility | Rotation diameter | 760 mm |
| Mobility | Operating height range | 0.4 to 2.0 m |
| Manipulation | Arm joints | 7 per arm |
| Manipulation | Gripping payload | 5 kg |
| Navigation | Primary method | 3D Laser SLAM |
| Navigation | Vision system | Panoramic RGB-D Depth Vision System |
| Power | Battery life | 4 to 6 hours |
| Environment | Working temperature | 0 to 40 degrees Celsius |
| Environment | Working humidity | 10 to 90% RH (non-condensing) |
The following table compares the three humanoid robots in Lanxin's product lineup, highlighting the distinct design choices and target applications of each model.
| Feature | VersaBot VB-1 | VB1-I | VB2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduced | August 2024 | 2024/2025 | 2025 |
| Mobility | Wheeled base (differential drive) | Bipedal (two legs) | Four-wheel omnidirectional |
| Height | 1.6 m | 1.65 m | 1.7 m |
| Weight | Not disclosed | 65 kg | Not disclosed |
| Degrees of freedom | Not disclosed | 42 | Not disclosed (7 per arm confirmed) |
| Navigation | 3D Pure Vision (RGB-D, no LiDAR) | 3D Pure Vision (RGB-D, no LiDAR) | 3D Laser SLAM + Panoramic RGB-D |
| Arm payload (per hand) | 2 kg | 6.5 kg | 5 kg |
| Arm span | 2 m | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Walking/movement speed | Not disclosed | 1.67 m/s (6.0 km/h) | 1.2 m/s (4.3 km/h) |
| Battery life | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | 4 to 6 hours |
| Hand type | Gripper | 5-finger dexterous | Not disclosed |
| Operating system | Not disclosed | Linux | Not disclosed |
| Operating temperature | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | 0 to 40 degrees Celsius |
| Primary focus | Industrial manufacturing logistics | Research and embodied AI | Embodied AI and industrial deployment |
| Distinguishing feature | World's first pure-vision humanoid | Full bipedal locomotion | Omnidirectional mobility with laser SLAM |
Several observations emerge from this comparison. The VB2's maximum speed of 1.2 m/s is lower than the VB1-I's 1.67 m/s, but the omnidirectional wheel platform compensates with superior maneuverability, the ability to move laterally, and much longer battery life. The VB2's 5 kg gripping payload falls between the VB-1's 2 kg and the VB1-I's 6.5 kg, though the 7-DOF arm configuration provides greater flexibility for complex manipulation tasks. The most significant differentiator is the navigation system: the VB2 is the first Lanxin humanoid to incorporate LiDAR-based SLAM alongside vision, acknowledging the precision and reliability advantages of laser-based localization for demanding industrial environments.
The VB2 is designed to serve a range of use cases across industrial and research settings. Lanxin targets two primary market segments: embodied AI research and industrial automation.[6]
The VB2's modular structure and extended battery life make it suitable as a research platform for embodied AI development. Researchers can use the robot to test and validate algorithms for autonomous navigation, object manipulation, task planning, and human-robot interaction in realistic physical environments. The combination of LiDAR and vision sensors provides multiple data streams for training and evaluating perception models, while the omnidirectional mobility platform allows experimentation with complex navigation strategies in confined spaces.
In industrial settings, the VB2 can perform tasks that combine autonomous navigation with manipulation, addressing workflows that conventional autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) cannot handle because they lack arms. Potential applications include:
Lanxin's existing customer base in industrial logistics (including Huawei, BYD, Foxconn, and others) provides a natural channel for VB2 deployments, as these companies already use Lanxin's AMR solutions and may benefit from humanoid robots that can handle tasks beyond simple transport.[1][5]
The VB2 enters an increasingly crowded humanoid robot market, particularly in China, where government policy support and substantial venture capital investment have driven rapid proliferation of humanoid robot companies and products.
China's humanoid robot market is projected to reach approximately 75 billion yuan by 2029, representing roughly 32.7% of the global market. Sales of humanoid robots in China surpassed 10,000 units in 2025, a 125% year-on-year increase. Chinese firms dominated global humanoid robot shipments in 2025, led by AgiBot (estimated 5,168 units shipped), followed by Unitree Robotics, UBTech, Leju Robotics, EngineAI, and Fourier Intelligence.[18][19]
The Chinese government recorded over 610 robotics investment deals in the first nine months of 2025 alone, reflecting strong institutional support for the sector.[20]
The VB2's combination of a wheeled omnidirectional base with a humanoid upper body places it in a specific competitive niche. Several other companies have adopted similar hybrid form factors:
The broader trend in the industry shows that companies with strong AI models for dual-arm manipulation are increasingly pragmatic about mobility platforms. Many maintain both wheeled and bipedal robots in their product portfolios, recognizing that wheeled platforms offer practical advantages for indoor environments where stability, battery life, and cost efficiency matter more than terrain versatility.[19]
The VB2 differentiates itself in several ways. Its hybrid 3D Laser SLAM plus RGB-D navigation approach offers higher precision than vision-only systems while providing richer environmental understanding than LiDAR-only solutions. Lanxin's deep experience in industrial AMR deployment (with clients such as Huawei, BYD, and Foxconn using thousands of Lanxin mobile robots) gives the company practical insights into factory logistics requirements that purely research-oriented humanoid robot companies may lack. The VB2's competitive pricing relative to premium humanoid platforms makes it accessible for industrial customers seeking to experiment with humanoid automation without committing to the cost of fully bipedal systems from companies like Figure AI, Apptronik, or Tesla.