In April 2025, Emily Genatowski, a 35-year-old American and doctoral student in Digital Humanities at the University of Vienna, picked up a package from a shipping company in Vienna. Inside: a Unitree G1 EDU 2 humanoid robot, manufactured in China, 1.30 meters tall, weighing 35 kilograms, with a purchase price of around 60,000 euros. Genatowski has now been living with the robot\u2014which she calls Tova, the Hebrew word for \u201egood\u201c\u2014for over a year. Her goal is not to create a marketing video, but rather to conduct a sober assessment: What can an AI robot actually accomplish in real-life everyday situations, and where does it reach its limits?.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Unitree G1 EDU 2 has no mouth and no eyes in the human sense; instead, it has LED strips and a camera in place of a face. It features a laser system for mapping its surroundings, a depth camera, and an integrated large language model that enables it to process language. It is considered \u201ehumanoid\u201c because of its shape, not because of its behavior: When asked\u2014even in Mandarin\u2014the manufacturer itself was unable to provide Genatowski with any information about how the device behaves toward pets, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Genatowski\u2019s daily life with Tova\u2014along with their dog Marceau in an apartment in Vienna\u2019s 9th district\u2014consisted of a long list of unresolved problems: legal ambiguities, technical limitations, and practical failures. This was particularly evident in the robot\u2019s hands. Three-finger or five-finger designs with multiple joints sound sophisticated, but in practice they failed when encountering ordinary doorknobs, drinking vessels, or faucets. Genatowski quickly had to abandon plans to use Tova in a choreographed manner. Instead, she took the robot to the registration office and on the streetcar to document how society and its institutions react to such a device in public spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most people are familiar with humanoid robots from short clips on social media: doing cartwheels, boxing, ironing, stocking shelves. Genatowski deliberately distances herself from this portrayal. Her research project aims to highlight precisely those obstacles\u2014both technical and societal\u2014that cause a robot like Tova to fail in reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chinese manufacturer Unitree is one of the best-known international providers of affordable humanoid robot platforms for research and development; the EDU model is specifically designed for universities and research institutions, not for private households.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Europe, this case illustrates two developments at once: China is pushing ahead with the mass production of humanoid robots at a remarkable pace. Manufacturers such as Unitree, UBTech, and Fourier Intelligence are bringing systems to market at prices that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, Genatowski\u2019s experience shows that there is still a wide gap between promotional videos and real-world applicability. For Austria and the EU, this means that those considering regulations for AI robotics in public spaces still have time\u2014but that time is running out. After a year with Tova, Genatowski\u2019s conclusion is sobering: The future has already arrived in the storage room, but it will take much longer to make its way into the living room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can find the full article in the Austrian news magazine \u201eprofil\u201c:<\/p>\n\n\n\n