Emir BardakçıWith the addition of Lu Zeyu, a former member of Tesla’s Optimus dexterity team, Xiaomi has taken another big step in its long-term robotics strategy. In his public statement, he asserts that at Xiaomi Robotics, he will lead the efforts of dexterity technology for accelerating the engineering implementation of advanced manipulation systems. Xiaomi has been expanding rapidly in the field of Embodied Intelligence, having recently open-sourced its MiMo-Embodied large model and onboarded several well-acknowledged researchers.
Xiaomi Recruits Top Robotics Talent for Dexterity Research
Xiaomi’s move to onboard Lu Zeyu underlines the company’s ambition in furthering robotic dexterity-a key capability towards next-generation humanoid platforms. His personal profile confirms his position as the head of Xiaomi’s dexterity team, with an ambition to integrate advanced control systems with practical engineering solutions. Recruitment falls within the broader strategy of Xiaomi scaling embodied intelligence solutions for consumer and industrial scenarios.
Growing Investments in Embodied Intelligence
Over the last few months, the company has reiterated robotics and artificial intelligence as the vital strategic pillars. On November 21, it presented its MiMo-Embodied model for the first time-a milestone in open-source, embodied AI research. Recently, Xiaomi also brought on board AI expert Luo Fuli, who is contributing to research that bridges language models with real-world physical systems, reflecting Xiaomi’s AGI-to-AloT evolution.
Expanding the Xiaomi Robotics Team
Xiaomi’s robotics department is hiring aggressively, and currently has 257 openings, including 12 for dexterous hands, ranging from mechanical design to embodied grasping algorithms-a clear indication of the company’s ambition to create a vertically integrated robotics platform.
Four Years of Robotics Development
In August 2021, Xiaomi set up the Robotics Lab, focusing on biomimetic robot design. It soon put forward a plan to create a Robotics Open Source Community for more knowledge sharing and deeper industrial collaboration. Since then, Xiaomi has continuously increased investment in robot hardware, software, and intelligence.
Xiaomi’s Humanoid and Quadruped Robot Progress
While reports earlier claimed Xiaomi’s CyberOne was close to entering a phased production stage, the company officially denied the rumors later. The CyberOne, launched on August 11, 2022, is still a research-level humanoid robot built to explore home care and companion use cases.
CyberDog and CyberDog 2 Development
Along with CyberOne, Xiaomi advances its quadruped robot line. The first CyberDog launched in 2021 for 9999 yuan (~$1,370) in China. Its successor, CyberDog 2, which released in August 2023, improved mobility and design and launched at 12999 yuan (~$1,780). These products make up a steady and structured approach toward integrating robotics into the future consumer ecosystems of Xiaomi.
