He Hacked a Chinese Humanoid and Still Wants It at Work | Werner Kraus - Fraunhofer IPA

By Werner Kraus's count, Fraunhofer IPA ran 66 tests on a Unitree G1 and found a humanoid that is hard to knock over and could work in a cleanroom, with a shoulder joint that overheats when it holds a box and a Bluetooth link his team used to hijack it. One robot hand his team tested lasted 100 hours where production needs 10,000, and the day before this interview his team unboxed an AgiBot G2 in the morning and had it putting a bottle into a bin by noon. In this interview from The Robot Bureau, Rogier and Lei sit down with Werner Kraus, head of the Automation and Robotics research division at Fraunhofer IPA, at the Humanoid Robots Summit Europe in Stuttgart. Werner's case for deploying now starts with what he saw in China, where by the count in his talk only a handful of the 150 to 200 Chinese robotics companies own the component stack, the way one factory can make dishwashers for Bosch and Siemens, and that is how a new Chinese humanoid can appear within a few months. He visited 14 Chinese companies with a delegation of 50 people from Baden-Württemberg, saw German machine tools cutting gears there and came home convinced Europe can build its own drives and actuators. Until European robots are ready he wants factories to learn on the Chinese machines already on the market and switch platforms if the data risks prove unsolvable. He wants robots that last 10,000 or 15,000 hours rather than 5,000, since 5,000 hours is used up after one year of three-shift production. "We can do it, but we have to do it. Otherwise others will take the market." Werner doubts European companies can win the mass market, and he sees their chance in high-value robots for places like critical infrastructure, where buyers will want a European machine. Shortly before the interview he was at the European Parliament with 15 robots built in Europe. What Europe lacks, in his view, is a moment like COVID, when Fraunhofer went from booking a web conference a day ahead to using Microsoft Teams within two weeks, and a short list of the first ten jobs where only a humanoid will do. Rogier and Lei cover: which humanoids Fraunhofer IPA has tested and why some results stay confidential, why neutral testing matters, with an anecdote about KUKA, Stäubli and a shared gearbox, why testing a robot's AI model is harder than testing its body, why Werner expects humanoids on factory floors within two years, and the three Universal Robots arms his team put into three-shift production in 2011, which all broke within nine months. Chapters: 00:00 Europe has to build its own humanoids 00:36 Benchmarking humanoids for the factory floor 02:07 What the Unitree G1 tests showed 02:58 Cleanroom tests and a Bluetooth hijack 05:42 Use Chinese robots now, switch later 08:04 The handful of firms behind China's humanoids 10:52 Europe needs its COVID moment 13:30 Neura Robotics and neutral testing 16:59 The Humanoid Capabilities Navigator 20:59 An AgiBot G2 skilled in four hours 25:19 Humanoids in factories within two years 29:43 Ten thousand hours and the 2011 lesson Attend Humanoid Europe 2026 on November 5-6 in Munich, Germany: https://humanoideurope2026.com/go/so-... Subscribe to our channel for insider perspectives on Physical AI. Follow Fraunhofer IPA • Company website: https://www.ipa.fraunhofer.de/en.html • YouTube:    / fraunhoferipa   Follow The Robot Bureau • LinkedIn:   / the-robot-bureau   • The Robot Bureau host Lei Li:   / leilibeyondthenow   • The Robot Bureau host Rogier Bikker:   / rogierbikker