DroidUp Moya

Moya, unveiled on 5 February 2026 at Zhangjiang Robotics Valley in Shanghai, is DroidUp's attempt to build a humanoid people will let close to them. Almost every other Chinese humanoid of this generation is sold on payload, uptime and factory cycle time; Moya is sold on skin. The silicone shell sits over internal padding and a ribcage structure and is heated to 32-36 °C, the face runs micro-expressions, and cameras track a person's eyes and expression so the robot can mirror them. The company behind it is not a newcomer to walking. DroidUp's stated core technology is tendon-driven actuation, and its published line runs from X01 (行者一号) through X02, which it calls the world's first full-size tendon-driven bipedal humanoid, to Rena, described as the first mass-producible robot with a full-degrees-of-freedom expressive face. Moya is essentially those two lines joined: Rena's face on a tendon-driven walking body. Tendon drive is also why the machine is light — around 32 kg at roughly 1.65 m, a fraction of the mass of comparable humanoids — which matters more for a robot working next to a frail person than any lifting figure would. The headline claims come from DroidUp and have not been independently benchmarked. The most-quoted one, 92% human-likeness of gait, is a marketing figure with no published methodology, and demonstration footage has drawn criticism for edited sequences and for hands that look considerably less finished than the face. The company's own site also claims a Guinness record for X01 walking over 100 km, and that claim holds up once the category is pinned down. X01 is Xingzhe No.1, built in 2015 by a team under Professor Li Qingdu at Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications; Li founded the company that became DroidUp the following year. The machine covered 134.03 km in 54 hr 34 min — 1,405 laps of a 95.39 m indoor track on 0.8 kWh — and Guinness listed the title as the longest walk by a quadruped robot, taking it from Cornell's Ranger at 65.243 km. That is a separate title from AgiBot A2's 106.286 km over 10-13 November 2025, which Guinness recognises as the longest journey walked by a humanoid robot: different category, different decade, no contradiction between the two. Commercially Moya is still a promise. DroidUp quotes about 173,000 USD per unit, a first batch of roughly 50 machines and sales later in 2026, targeting hospitals, elder care, banks, museums and stations. Reporting on the company describes a small operation — around 30 staff and a modest funding total — so the gap between a launch event and 50 delivered machines is the thing worth watching.

▸Videos

No videos yet.

▸Reviews