It must be said that the development speed of robots is somewhat unexpected. A few years ago, robots were still toddling in laboratories; today, they can not only sing, dance, and rap, but even enter factories to "tighten screws." However, while enterprise applications are emerging, what about the consumer market? For ordinary consumers, it is indeed cool that robots can run faster than Usain Bolt, but if asked what use they are for individuals, there is indeed no precise answer.
Xiao Lei believes that if robots want to move from the enterprise market to the consumer market, they must answer one question: "What use are 'you'?" In response, Qiyuan's answer is—the personal robot.
On September 20, Qiyuan officially launched the Qiyuan Q1 and Qiyuan T1, two personal robots in Shanghai, achieving immediate shipping upon release. Unlike robots designed for industrial and commercial scenarios, these two products have targeted personal and family scenarios from the very beginning, hoping to extend robot applications to personal life fields such as companionship, entertainment, AI learning, outdoor accompaniment, and video creation.
It can be said that what Qiyuan wants to build is not a robot that is occasionally taken out for play, but a "companion" that can truly enter users' daily lives.
But here comes the question: "They are all robots, so why is yours called a 'personal robot'?" Indeed, if they all have similar appearances, interaction methods, and motion systems, then the word "personal" is obviously not fully reflected.
Therefore, in addition to selling robots, Qiyuan has also developed two platforms, PrimeFLOW and PrimeToolkit. One is responsible for the appearance, and the other for internal development, opening up the appearance, movements, and even personality for users to customize themselves. To some extent, what Qiyuan is trying to do is not just two personal robots, but a UGC platform for the robot era.
Customizable and Accompanying You Outdoors, Qiyuan Takes the Lead in Defining the "Personal Robot"
To involve users in co-creation, the first step is to have a robot that can enter users' personal lives. This is the mission of Qiyuan Q1 and Qiyuan T1. As the hardware foundation of the Qiyuan ecosystem, the two products have chosen a somewhat different path.
Let's first look at the Qiyuan Q1. This product places more emphasis on small size, openness, and scalability. The standing height of the whole machine is 88 cm, weighing about 15 kg, and it supports folding and storage. Compared with traditional full-size humanoid robots, it is compact and portable, making it more suitable for scenarios such as home, education, and personal development.
In order to maintain relatively complete motion capabilities while reducing the volume, the Qiyuan Q1 adopts a self-developed micro QDD (Quasi-Direct Drive) joint, making the joints nearly the size of an egg. At the same time, it achieves full-body flexible force control, making the robot smoother during movement and more suitable for close-range human-robot interaction scenarios such as family and children's companionship.
However, the most core point is that the Qiyuan Q1 is not a robot that is completely finalized after leaving the factory. It supports open SDK and HDK interfaces, and users can install appearance structural parts themselves. On Bilibili, many content creators have already created their own works based on this product, such as this incredibly cool battle armor robot.
What about the Qiyuan T1? In comparison, its companionship attribute is actually stronger. As the first personal robot that supports shape-shifting functions, the Qiyuan T1 adopts a Transformer cross-form integrated architecture, which can autonomously switch between wheeled-legged humanoid and quadruped forms, thereby selecting a more suitable mode of movement according to different environments such as indoors and outdoors.
This design is not just for showing off; the original intention is to meet the different needs in real usage scenarios such as family companionship and outdoor accompaniment. For example, when you take it out shopping, you can let it transform into a quadruped form to carry items for you. Moreover, in terrains such as grasslands, the quadruped form is also more stable. And when you need a "photographer," it can switch back to the humanoid form, link with a handheld gimbal camera, and perform camera movements and shooting according to your instructions.
Simply put, the Qiyuan Q1 is more suitable for users who like development and modification, while the Qiyuan T1 leans more towards companionship and practical use. However, hardware mainly solves the problem of "how robots get along with humans," while "how to make it more 'personal'" is left to PrimeFLOW and PrimeToolkit to solve.
From Changing Appearances to Writing Skills, Qiyuan Begins to Build the Robot UGC Ecosystem
Let me ask you a question first: when you see a person, what feature do you remember first? Most of the time, the answer is "clothes," followed by height, body shape, and appearance. And after you become familiar with them, your main impression of them will turn into their personality and behavior.
This logic applies to robots as well. Therefore, Qiyuan has developed two design platforms, responsible for designing the "body" and "soul" of Qiyuan robots, respectively.
Among them, PrimeFLOW is aimed at the "appearance" design of robots and can be said to be the most critical platform. This is because, for traditional consumer electronics produced, the content allowed for user modification is actually very limited. It's like you can change the phone case, but you cannot easily change the back cover to a different color.
What PrimeFLOW aims to do is to allow you to easily define the appearance, movements, and other systems of Qiyuan robots. The built-in AI system can design appearance parts on its own and generate 3D modeling files based on users' natural language input, utilizing AI models and preset parameters. In the software, users can see the effect of the appearance parts mounted on the Qiyuan Q1. After confirming there are no issues, they can directly produce them using equipment such as 3D printers.
You might ask, what if there is no 3D printer? Qiyuan has already thought of this problem, so it provides users with an official printing service. Users can upload their own designed 3D modeling files, and the official party will print them and mail them to the users. In addition, users can also upload their own 3D appearance works for other users to download or refer to. If the other party likes your design, they can also directly contact the author to purchase the copyright or the finished parts, and then install them on their own Qiyuan robots.
In addition to appearance design, PrimeFLOW also provides motion and expression editing methods similar to video editing software. Users can directly call templates for dance, interaction, emotion, etc., and then adjust the sequence of movements, rhythm, expressions, and music, which will ultimately be synchronized to the robot for real execution.
It also supports personalized customization of parameters such as the robot's personality, timbre, and tone, enabling Qiyuan robots to achieve "there are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand people." Although the core is the same robot, the appearance and movements are completely different.
It can be said that Qiyuan has actually created a "robot market," except that what is traded here is not the robots themselves, but your ideas and works.
What about PrimeToolkit? It is responsible for the "capability" development of the robot.
PrimeToolkit is a one-stop platform built around the development, verification, distribution, and use of robot skills. Prime Console is responsible for developing and managing skills, Prime Skill Hub is responsible for skill registration, governance, discovery, and distribution, and Prime Agent is responsible for securely installing skills on specific robots and managing their running status. At the same time, it is equipped with a developer community that provides tutorials, cases, templates, and other content to help developers grow together.
Although ordinary consumers do not need to understand PrimeToolkit to play with Qiyuan robots, for the entire robot industry, the value of PrimeToolkit is extremely significant because this platform has put "full-link development" on the user side for the first time.
In the past, many developers were actually "reinventing the wheel." Obviously, someone had already developed good algorithms or skills, but they could not be shared due to the lack of a platform. When others wanted to achieve the same functions, they would go and design them again. What PrimeToolkit wants to solve is this problem. In the future, skills developed by one person can be directly used, modified, and further added with functions by others, without having to start from scratch every time.
At the same time, Qiyuan also hopes to further turn this development capability into a complete content ecosystem. Therefore, at this launch event, Qiyuan announced the simultaneous launch of PrimeHub Creator Workshop and PrimeStore Skill Store. The former is mainly aimed at developers, providing services such as the creation and sharing of robot skills. The latter is more like an "app store" for robots, where ordinary users can search for functions and then download and install them, without having to browse through numerous project introductions in the developer community.
Some people might mention Unitree's UniStore. Yes, the two do have similarities, but the differences are also quite significant. Unitree's UniStore is more like an "App Store + developer community," while PrimeToolkit is more like a combination of "GitHub/development toolchain + App Store + creator community." Qiyuan opens up more underlying tools to users, allowing them to almost completely control their robots.
PrimeFLOW allows users to decide "who" the robot is, while PrimeToolkit allows users to decide "what" the robot can do. Your robot is defined by you, which is the best interpretation of a "personal robot."
The Next Battle for Personal Robots May No Longer Just Be About Hardware
It can be said that Qiyuan's PrimeFLOW and PrimeToolkit are not simply about adding a few additional features to the Qiyuan Q1 and Qiyuan T1, but rather hope to establish a continuously growing user ecosystem for personal robots.
To this end, Qiyuan also announced the "Qiyuan Star Ecosystem Plan" at the launch event, investing CNY 1 billion over the next 5 years to jointly build the personal robot ecosystem with universities, developers, content creators, and industry partners.
Writing this, Xiao Lei actually thought of Android. This system, which occupies a large share globally, actually grew in this way: opening most permissions to developers and providing development tools that go deep into the underlying layer. Then developers will naturally help you solve those headache-inducing problems.
To some extent, the greatest value of a UGC platform is that product updates no longer rely solely on manufacturers. Tens of thousands of individual users, developers, and enterprises in the platform will become the true core of the development ecosystem. This is also a good thing for users, as they do not have to worry about their robots no longer being updated after the robot manufacturer stops updating in the future.
The reason why mobile phones have become the most mainstream smart terminals is not because they have the strongest performance or the largest screens (both of which are actually inferior to PCs), but because mobile phones have formed a massive software and developer ecosystem around users, allowing users on the same hardware platform to continuously gain new functions.
In Xiao Lei's view, if personal robots really want to enter the mass market like mobile phones in the future, the content and developer ecosystem beyond hardware will most likely be an unavoidable threshold.
Therefore, looking at Qiyuan's launch event now, you will find that the so-called "personal" does not just mean that the robot belongs to a certain individual, but that users can define the robot themselves. In the past robot industry, people paid more attention to performance and functions, but in the future, the focus will most likely shift to "who is more interesting." After all, for a consumer-grade product, the most important thing is actually being "fun to play with."
When users transform from purchasers to creators, robots will no longer be just standardized products, but will have the opportunity to form their own product ecosystems like smartphones and game consoles. What Qiyuan is doing now is laying the foundation for it in advance.