"Chinese tech behemoth Ant Group, which owns payment platform Alipay, has been showing off its first humanoid robot at tech conferences this month. It joins a growing wave of companies carving out space along a fresh frontier in automation by combining artificial intelligence with physical tech. Videos and news reports show Robbyant's R1 robot cooking for audiences at the IFA 2025 tech show in Berlin last week. What was on the menu? Shrimp, reportedly."
"Helping out in the kitchen is the first of many potential use cases for R1, Robbyant says. The company, also known as Shanghai Ant Lingbo Technology Co., says the bot could be used as a companion or caregiver robot in healthcare, or as a robotic tour guide in the travel industry. The company has not announced a launch date or price point for the bot and is reportedly testing it in community centers and restaurants."
"It would be wise to view claims of R1's performance skeptically until the bot can be seen acting on its own in the real world, though this video from IFA doesn't set expectations too high, as R1 places a box on a counter at a pace so glacial it makes a sloth seem speedy: Ant joins the likes of Elon Musk's Tesla in doubling down on AI-powered robotics."
Ant Group's Robbyant unit presented a humanoid robot called R1 at recent tech events, including IFA 2025 in Berlin and a Shanghai conference. Video shows R1 performing simple kitchen tasks, reportedly cooking shrimp, while the company frames the robot for roles in companionship, caregiving, and travel guiding. The robot is reportedly being tested in community centers and restaurants, with no launch date or price announced. Demonstrations display slow, limited motions that invite skepticism about autonomous real-world capability. The project aligns with broader AI-robotics investments, even as the field wrestles with past overpromises and hopes for software-driven progress.
Read at The Verge
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