New humanoid robots from China look like creepy pop star action figures – complete with slightly dodgy lip-synch

They're 90 percent human in some ways, can provide daily companionship psychological support

One of China’s emerging humanoid robotics companies has launched its most-realistic looking models yet and says it has already taken over 13,000 orders for the $17,600/ £13,300 machines.Here’s a shot of the new machines.

UBTECH's UWORLD U1, which the company bills as "The World's First Full-Size Mass-Produced Ultra-Bionic Humanoid Robot"

You’re looking at the UWORLD U1, which Chinese company UBTECH says enjoys 88 degrees of freedom thanks to use of “a proprietary dual-pivot biomimetic cervical spine, enabling it to replicate up to 90 percent of fundamental human movements.”

The company says the machines are suitable for “long-term companionship” due to what it claims is “the world's first emotion-aware LLM … capable of recognizing more than 20 fine-grained emotional states with an accuracy rate exceeding 90 percent.”