A delivery robot needs to see around a corner. A humanoid needs a hand that can tell a raw egg from a steel bolt. Neither wants to design those parts from scratch. RoboSense (速腾聚创) is betting that the fastest path in robotics is to sell the senses, not the whole body.
Key takeaways
- At its "Hello Robot" 2025 event on 3 January 2025, RoboSense (速腾聚创, 02498.HK) declared itself a robotics technology platform company.
- It launched the E1R, described as the world's first fully-solid-state digital LiDAR (全固态数字化激光雷达) for robots, now in mass delivery.
- A second-generation dexterous hand (灵巧手) was shown with 20 degrees of freedom, a 5 kg payload, and 14 force sensors.
- The company also revealed its first self-developed humanoid robot, positioned as a platform to test its own components.
- Context: RoboSense delivered its one-millionth LiDAR in February 2025 and sold about 544,200 units across 2024, more than double the prior year.
From car eyes to robot senses
RoboSense built its name supplying LiDAR (激光雷达) to automakers. At the 3 January 2025 "Hello Robot" global launch, CEO Qiu Chunchao (邱纯潮) reframed the company as a supplier of incremental robotics components and solutions — the "eyes, hands, and brains" that other robot builders buy instead of inventing. The pitch is pragmatic: most robotics startups are good at integration but weak at sensors, force feedback, and control. RoboSense wants to be the shelf they shop from.
The E1R and the "digital" claim
The headline hardware is the E1R, which RoboSense calls the world's first fully-solid-state digital LiDAR (全固态数字化激光雷达) for robots. It is built on a digital SPAD-SoC chip and a 2D VCSEL chip, and is aimed at industrial, commercial, and embodied-AI (具身智能) mobile robots moving through varied environments. The company says E1R has entered mass delivery and expects it to be a volume driver in its robotics LiDAR line.
On the automotive side, RoboSense also showed the EM4, billed as the world's first "thousand-line" (千线) ultra-long-range digital LiDAR, signaling that the same digital architecture now spans both cars and robots.
A hand that feels
Sensing is only half the story. RoboSense demonstrated a second-generation dexterous hand (灵巧手) with 20 degrees of freedom, a maximum load of 5 kg, and 14 force sensors distributed across its fingertips, finger pads, and palm. Paired with an arm and control system, the hand is meant to reproduce fine human manipulations — the kind needed to pick up delicate or irregular objects. Alongside it, the company listed force sensor FS-3D, linear motor LA-8000, and robot domain controller DC-G1 as building blocks for others to assemble.
Why build a humanoid at all?
The company's first self-developed humanoid robot is deliberately not a product for sale. RoboSense describes it as a general-purpose development platform — a "mother machine" to exercise its own vision, touch, and joint components. By putting its parts into a complete body, it can validate integration and hand customers a reference design. This mirrors a broader Chinese pattern: sensor and component firms moving up into whole-machine showcases to prove their stack.
The scale behind the pivot
The repositioning is backed by manufacturing scale. RoboSense reported that its one-millionth LiDAR was delivered on 24 February 2025 — a unit bound for the "Qinglong" (青龙) humanoid built by Humanoid Robotics (Shanghai) Co., a 43-degree-of-freedom machine with 400 TOPS of compute — making it, by its account, the first company to reach one million high-line LiDAR units. On the closer-range side, RoboSense also lists a hemispherical digital LiDAR called Airy for robot perception, showing the component lineup now spans both vehicle and robot needs. For full-year 2024, the company disclosed LiDAR sales of about 544,200 units, more than double the previous year. Those figures come from company and Securities Times (证券时报) reporting and should be read as company-disclosed rather than independently audited here.
According to Li An, chief scientist at BrainNet (脑机网), the interesting shift is that Chinese component suppliers are no longer content to be silent suppliers — they are shaping robot architectures by controlling the senses and actuators others depend on.
Honest limitations
Most claims here originate from RoboSense's own launch and Securities Times coverage; we found no independent teardown or benchmark of the E1R's "world-first" solid-state claim or the dexterous hand's force-sensor performance. "Mass delivery" and "one-millionth unit" are company assertions. The 544,200-unit 2024 sales figure is company-disclosed. RoboSense remains primarily a LiDAR firm in revenue terms, so the robotics-platform story is a strategic direction, not yet a proven business mix. We did not verify third-party adoption beyond named partners.
What readers can do now
- Robot builders should watch RoboSense's component catalog as a faster route to prototyping than in-house sensor development.
- Investors should separate the LiDAR cash engine from the robotics-platform narrative when reading future results.
- Readers can judge the "digital LiDAR" claim by waiting for independent reviews of the E1R before treating it as settled technology.