RobotEra L7
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Last reviewed
May 2, 2026
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The RobotEra L7 (Chinese: 星动 L7, Xingdong L7) is a full-size bipedal humanoid robot developed by Beijing-based RobotEra (星动纪元), a Tsinghua University spin-off founded in August 2023. The L7 was officially unveiled on July 28, 2025, succeeding the company's earlier STAR1 bipedal platform. It stands 171 cm tall, weighs about 65 kg, and has 55 degrees of freedom across the body, with each five-finger XHand1 dexterous hand contributing 12 directly driven joints [1][2]. RobotEra positions the L7 as a general-purpose embodied AI platform driven by ERA-42, the company's in-house vision-language-action (VLA) model [3].
At launch the L7 was reported as the fastest full-size bipedal humanoid robot, with a peak running speed of 4 m/s (about 14.4 km/h, 9 mph), edging past the company's own STAR1 (which reached roughly 3.6 m/s) and outrunning earlier publicly demonstrated speeds for Unitree's H1 and similar full-size bipeds [4][5]. RobotEra has since shown the L7 dancing, performing a Chinese sword routine, sorting parcels, scanning barcodes, and assembling small mechanical parts [3][6].
| Specification | Value |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | RobotEra (Beijing Xingdong Jiyuan Technology) |
| Type | Full-size bipedal humanoid robot |
| Announced | July 28, 2025 (Beijing) |
| Height | 1.71 m (171 cm) |
| Weight | 65 kg (excluding dexterous hands) |
| Total degrees of freedom | 55 |
| Arm | 7 DOF per arm, anthropomorphic |
| Waist | 3 DOF |
| Hand | XHand1, 12 active DOF, fully direct-drive five-finger |
| Wrist | 10-axis (6 in arm + 4 in hand), ±45° lateral, ±90° forward/back |
| Operating reach | 2.1 m diameter spherical workspace |
| Peak joint torque | 400 N·m |
| Peak joint speed | 25 rad/s |
| Top running speed | 4 m/s (≈14.4 km/h, 9 mph) |
| Dual-arm payload | 20 kg |
| Battery | 60 V, 15 Ah, hot-swappable |
| Operating time | About 6 hours |
| Onboard compute | 80 TOPS (x86) + 275 TOPS (NVIDIA Orin) |
| Perception | Binocular RGB-D cameras, 3D LiDAR, microphone array, speaker |
| Field of view | 360° (multi-sensor fusion) |
| AI model | ERA-42 vision-language-action (VLA) |
| Construction | Aerospace-grade aluminum alloy and carbon-fiber composites |
| Connectivity | HDMI, Ethernet, USB, 2.4 GHz wireless, emergency stop |
| Categories | Humanoid robots, Embodied AI hardware |
The primary specifications above are taken from the L7 product page on RobotEra's official site and the press materials released at the WAIC 2025 launch event [1][3][7].
The L7 keeps to a roughly average-adult human silhouette: 1.71 m tall, 65 kg without hands, with a 7-DOF anthropomorphic arm on each side and a 3-DOF actuated waist. The waist gives the upper body a 2.1 m diameter sphere of reach, which RobotEra cites as one of the design targets that distinguishes it from STAR1 (which had a more limited torso and shorter reach) [1][6][8].
The frame uses aerospace-grade aluminum alloy combined with carbon-fiber composites. RobotEra describes the joint architecture as a quasi-direct-drive (QDD) system: the company's self-developed actuator modules drop the conventional high-ratio harmonic gearbox in favor of a low-ratio planetary stage paired with a high-torque-density frameless motor and torque sensor [3][7]. The stated goal is high backdrivability and force-feedback fidelity, both of which are needed to do whole-body high-dynamic motions (jumps, spins, breakdance) without losing balance, and to do compliant manipulation without breaking parts.
Peak knee-joint torque is 400 N·m, and peak joint angular velocity is 25 rad/s. Those numbers, particularly the joint speed, are what allow the 4 m/s top running speed [4][7].
Each hand is a RobotEra XHand1, a five-finger fully direct-drive hand with 12 active degrees of freedom. The XHand1 was originally announced as a standalone product in 2024 alongside the company's ERA-42 model and is sold separately as a research module [9]. On the L7 each finger joint is independently actuated, and the fingertip can adjust position at a refresh rate the company quotes as 10 Hz for closed-loop fingertip control [3].
RobotEra also calls out a 10-axis wrist (counting the four hand-side joints together with the arm-side wrist joints) with ±45° lateral swing and ±90° forward/back motion. The motivation given is industrial assembly: the wrist can rotate the fingers into a tilted screw or hidden fastener without rotating the whole forearm or torso [3].
The head carries a stereo binocular RGB-D camera, a microphone array, and a speaker. A solid-state 3D LiDAR provides depth at longer range. RobotEra fuses the streams into what it calls a 360° multi-sensor field of view, used both for navigation and for in-hand manipulation [1][7].
Onboard compute is split between an x86 module (80 TOPS) and an NVIDIA Jetson Orin module (275 TOPS), for a stated combined throughput of 355 TOPS [1]. The x86 side handles ROS-style middleware and motion control; the Orin side runs the neural networks (vision encoders, the VLA policy, low-level reinforcement learning controllers).
The internal battery is rated 60 V, 15 Ah (about 900 Wh) and is designed to be hot-swappable, so a depleted pack can be exchanged without rebooting the robot. RobotEra quotes about 6 hours of operating time, although it has not published a standard duty cycle, so the figure should be treated as a marketing estimate rather than a measured number [1].
The L7 ships with ERA-42, RobotEra's end-to-end vision-language-action model. ERA-42 was first announced on January 9, 2025, as what the company called "the world's first end-to-end embodied large model matched to a five-finger dexterous hand," originally demonstrated on the XHand1 alone. With the L7 it became the model controlling the whole body, including locomotion [9][10].
ERA-42 is a single neural network that takes camera images, proprioceptive state (joint positions, IMU), and a natural-language instruction, and outputs continuous joint targets. The training pipeline mixes three data sources: large-scale unlabeled video (used for pre-training a visual world model), human demonstration video, and teleoperated robot data collected on RobotEra hardware [10]. RobotEra claims that with this approach a new task can be added to ERA-42 in about two hours of additional data collection, and that the deployed model can handle on the order of 100 distinct tool-use and manipulation tasks, including using a screwdriver, hammering, pouring water, and pipetting [10].
For whole-body locomotion, RobotEra has stated that L7's high-dynamic moves (running, 360-degree spin jumps, breakdance) are produced by an end-to-end reinforcement learning policy trained largely in simulation and transferred to hardware, that is, a sim-to-real transfer pipeline of the type that has become standard among Chinese humanoid developers [3][6].
The L7 also supports teleoperation via paired exoskeleton-style hand controllers and head-mounted VR. RobotEra has used this in public demos where an operator drives the robot through long-horizon tasks (folding clothes, washing dishes, opening packages), and the data collected this way is recycled into the next ERA-42 training run [3][9]. The company describes its long-term goal as bringing whole-body autonomy to the point where teleoperation becomes the exception rather than the rule.
The L7 was first shown publicly on July 26 to 29, 2025, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, with the formal product launch press event held on July 28 [3][6]. The on-stage demos included free-running across the booth, a 360-degree spinning jump, breakdance moves, and a parcel-sorting routine using the XHand1 hands. RobotEra used the same event to announce that ERA-42 was now driving the full body, not just the hands [6].
A few weeks later, in August 2025, the L7 won first place in the human-piloted bipedal category at the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Conference held in Beijing [11].
In early 2026, around the run-up to the Chinese New Year, RobotEra published a video of the L7 performing a traditional Chinese sword dance, complete with overhead cuts, leg flips, and aerial spins while still gripping a sword. The choreography was developed jointly with researchers at Tsinghua and was shown as a stress test of whole-body balance and arm-leg coordination [12].
Other public demonstrations in late 2025 and early 2026 include:
RobotEra has not published a public list price for the L7. The company reports that more than 200 humanoid units (across all of its product lines, primarily L7 and the smaller Q5) were shipped during 2025 and that more than half of orders by value originated from international customers. RobotEra also claims orders from nine of the world's ten largest technology firms, although it has not named the customers [3][14].
Third-party robotics resellers list the L7 with delivery times around 3 weeks and treat it as a pilot/research product rather than a stocked item, with pricing handled on a quote basis [15]. Other third-party listings in late 2025 and early 2026 quote indicative prices in the range of roughly US$120,000 to US$250,000 depending on hand configuration and software bundle, but those numbers are not confirmed by RobotEra and should be treated as resale estimates [16].
The L7 is positioned for industrial pilots in logistics, flexible manufacturing, and research, rather than retail consumer sales. RobotEra's CEO Chen Jianyu told tmtpost in mid-2025 that he expects humanoid robots to start entering homes at scale within roughly five years, but that the current commercial focus is industrial deployment [14].
The L7 is the direct successor to RobotEra's earlier STAR1 (星动 STAR1), which was unveiled in October 2024. STAR1 introduced the company's 55-DOF whole-body design and the 400 N·m / 25 rad/s joint module, and held the unofficial Chinese-humanoid running-speed record at about 3.6 m/s before the L7 took it [4][8]. The major changes from STAR1 to L7 are: the integration of XHand1 dexterous hands as standard, the migration to ERA-42 as a full-body VLA controller, the upgraded waist with 3 DOF and 2.1 m reach, and the higher 4 m/s top speed.
| Feature | STAR1 | L7 |
|---|---|---|
| Announced | Oct 2024 | July 2025 |
| Height | 1.71 m | 1.71 m |
| Weight | ~65 kg | 65 kg (no hands) |
| Total DOF | 55 | 55 (plus 24 in two hands) |
| Hands | Optional XHand1 | XHand1 standard |
| Waist DOF | 1 | 3 |
| Top running speed | 3.6 m/s | 4 m/s |
| Whole-body controller | RL locomotion + separate manipulation stack | ERA-42 VLA, end-to-end |
In the broader market, the L7 sits alongside other Chinese full-size bipeds: Unitree H1 and G1, Fourier Intelligence GR-1 and GR-2, UBTech Walker S1, Agibot A2, and Galbot G1. Compared to Western entrants such as Tesla Optimus, Figure AI's Figure 02, and Boston Dynamics' electric Atlas, the L7's distinguishing claims are the speed record and the explicit pairing of an in-house VLA model (ERA-42) with a 12-DOF dexterous hand on each arm. RobotEra leans on that pairing as the basis for ERA-42's tool-use repertoire [9][10].
RobotEra (Beijing Xingdong Jiyuan Technology Co., Ltd.) was founded in August 2023 and is incubated by Tsinghua University's Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS). The company says it is the only humanoid-robotics venture in which Tsinghua University itself holds an equity stake. The founder and CEO is Chen Jianyu (陈建宇), an assistant professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua IIIS [17][18].
RobotEra's headquarters is in the Tsinghua Science Park in Haidian, Beijing. The company says more than 80% of its staff work in R&D and that it recruits from Tsinghua, Peking University, UC Berkeley, and the National University of Singapore [17].
Funding history through mid-2025:
RobotEra also reports a separate later-stage round of close to 1 billion yuan and a cumulative order book in the range of 500 million yuan, although the exact closing date and lead investors of that round have been reported only in Chinese-language coverage [20].
In parallel with the L7, RobotEra also sells: