Robot for rent for wedding or business: humanoid rental platform launched in China

Chinese robotics company AgiBot has launched the Qingtian Rent service, a platform for renting humanoid robots for various events and tasks. The developers offer to use the robots in 16 different scenarios - from business negotiations and exhibitions to concerts and wedding ceremonies.

This is reported by Interesting Engineering.

Among the available models is the Unitree U2 dancing robot, which costs about USD 690 per day to rent. A more budget option is the Unitree Go2 Air robot dog, which will cost about USD 138 per day. At the same time, the flagship model AgiBot Yuanzheng A2, which the company positions as a robot with advanced capabilities for interacting with people, is rented for USD 1,380 per day. The price already includes technical support and delivery.

Currently, Qingtian Rent operates in 50 cities in China, cooperates with 600 service providers and has over 1,000 robots at its disposal. The company plans that by 2026 the platform will cover over 200 cities.

In addition, AgiBot intends to attract more than 10 equipment manufacturers, create a network of 200 leading rental operators, cooperate with 3,000 content creators and serve about 400,000 customers.

Analysts estimate the volume of the robot rental market in China in 2025 at more than USD 140 million. After the launch of Qingtian Rent, this figure may increase to over USD 1.4 billion next year. China is currently seen as a key platform for large-scale testing of the RaaS (Robot as a Service) model, which is rapidly gaining popularity around the world.

As a reminder, on May 25, a historic event took place in Hangzhou, China - the start of the CMG World Robot Competition: Mecha Fighting Series, the first international humanoid robot fighting tournament. The tournament became a milestone in the development of robotics, highlighting the rapid introduction of artificial intelligence into the field of combat sports.