Because the humanoid class strikes into early-stage mass manufacturing, robots should reveal excessive payload capability, endurance, and cost-efficiency to realize sustainable deployment.
In the course of the IEEE Worldwide Convention on Robotics and Automation 2025 (ICRA 2025) held in Atlanta from Could 19 to 23, Shanghai Kepler Robotics Co., Ltd (“Kepler Humanoid Robotic”) launched its newest industrial-grade humanoid robotic, the K2 “Bumblebee,” drawing world consideration with a dwell demonstration of its real-world operational capabilities. The occasion introduced collectively main researchers, executives, and engineers from throughout the robotics ecosystem.
Notable guests to the Kepler Humanoid Robotic sales space included Jim Fan, Senior Analysis Scientist at NVIDIA, and Hesheng Wang, Normal Chair of the Worldwide Convention on Clever Robots and Methods (IROS), amongst different robotics specialists. They engaged in discussions on the trajectory of humanoid robotics and the trail to scalable deployment in industrial environments.
Kepler’s sales space shortly turned a high traffic vacation spot at ICRA 2025. The K2 “Bumblebee” greeted attendees with pure gestures, navigated the venue with regular, autonomous mobility, and interacted fluidly with different robotic techniques. Its partaking presence prompted a flurry of pictures and movies, with many attendees lining as much as pose with the robotic.
Debo Hu, CEO of Kepler Humanoid Robotic, acknowledged, “The following main focus for the humanoid robotic sector is attaining a whole business worth loop, and industrial environments current the clearest path to near-term deployment. Our fifth-generation humanoid robots at the moment are in limited-series manufacturing, with industrial use instances as our preliminary focus. Our newest spherical of funding reinforces our confidence within the business viability of our platform.”
Kepler Humanoid Robotic is devoted to growing industry-leading blue-collar humanoid techniques. Function-built for industrial settings, the K2 “Bumblebee,” stands 175 cm tall, weighs 75 kg , and options 52 levels of freedom and greater than 80 built-in sensors. Its onboard compute reaches 100 TOPS, enabling it to autonomously execute activity sequences in structured operational environments.
Because the humanoid class strikes into early-stage mass manufacturing, robots should reveal excessive payload capability, endurance, and cost-efficiency to realize sustainable deployment.
The K2 “Bumblebee” options Kepler’s proprietary planetary curler screw actuators, engineered for clean movement management and lowered power draw. With near-zero static energy consumption, the robotic gives prolonged uptime. Mixed with its revolutionary series-parallel structure and superior actuation system, the K2 helps payloads of 15 kg per arm and as much as 30 kg with each arms. The robotic delivers as much as 8 hours of operational time on a single 1-hour cost. Moreover, its proprietary rotary actuators allow millimeter-level precision for effective motor duties.
As well as, the Kepler K2 “Bumblebee” additionally consists of Kepler’s proprietary Dexterous Arms, every that includes 11 levels of freedom, 25 force-sensing contact factors per finger, and a 6-axis drive/torque sensor on the wrist. These capabilities permit for superior manipulation duties throughout a spread of commercial functions.
Kepler experiences that over 80% of the robotic’s core {hardware} is developed and manufactured in-house—supporting vertical integration, decreasing prices, and bettering provide chain resilience. The bottom mannequin of the K2 “Bumblebee” is priced at $30,000 and might carry out the equal workload of roughly 1.5 full-time human employees in comparable timeframes.
Deployment flexibility is a key enabler for humanoid adoption. In line with Goldman Sachs, humanoid robots are anticipated to start integration into manufacturing environments between 2024 and 2027. Kepler is concentrating on clever manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, area of interest industries, educational analysis, and training as its main markets. The corporate’s commercialization roadmap prioritizes penetration of particular verticals earlier than increasing into general-purpose use instances.
K2 “Bumblebee” items are presently being trialed throughout a spread of real-world industrial eventualities. Kepler continues to increase its partnerships all through the robotics worth chain to speed up the transition from prototyping to commercial-scale deployment.
