China’s Unitree Robotics – among the world’s biggest producers of humanoid and quadruped robots – based designs for its most successful robot dogs on innovations funded by the U.S. military, according to a former U.S. defense technology official and three top researchers involved in the project. Unitree’s $1,600 Go2 model, launched in 2023, helped the company rapidly dominate the global quadruped robot market — its Shanghai IPO has drawn frenzied demand. Another Unitree robot has been shown on Chinese state television, opens new tab, armed and accompanying People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops on an exercise. These robots draw on breakthroughs ​in quadruped movement financed by the U.S. DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and other military programs, the researchers and the former official told Reuters.

Full report : How US military funding propelled China’s robot dogs.