Qiyuan's Q1 and T1 robots go on sale from 19,999 yuan
China's consumer-robot race just got its first real price tags. Qiyuan Robotics put two home robots on sale in Shanghai on Sunday, and the numbers — plus the agent stack behind them — are the interesting part.
Qiyuan Robotics, the consumer brand of Shanghai-listed Swancor Advanced Materials, disclosed prices for its Q1 and T1 personal robots for the first time at a launch event in Shanghai on Sunday, with units shipping from October 1. The Q1 starts at 19,999 yuan (about $2,800), with an Explorer edition at 26,999 yuan; the transformable T1 starts at the same 19,999 yuan, with a Pro version at 29,999 yuan. Orders run through the company's official mini-program and authorised retail channels. Co-founder Peng Zhihui, who took the chairman's seat after Agibot's takeover of Swancor, framed the ambition bluntly: Swancor's CEO Tian Hua told reporters the consumer line's goal is to be "the Apple of robotics."
The Q1 is the small one — 88 centimetres tall, sized to fit a 22-inch suitcase, with a battery designed to be swapped one-handed. Its shell is meant to be replaced: users can 3D-print new casings from a reference image or their own description, and the robot's personality, voice, tone and signature gestures are all configurable. On stage, a 10-year-old dragged and dropped modules in a graphical editor to give the Q1 a set of expressions, motions and voice triggers — the pitch being that personal robots get programmed by children now, not by people who write code.
The T1 is the more unusual machine. It runs a single Transformer-based architecture across two bodies, switching between a wheeled humanoid stance and a four-legged one, with a camera that retracts automatically when it changes shape. In quadruped form it clears 15-centimetre obstacles and 30-degree slopes, carries 3 kilograms while moving and holds 10 kilograms statically, and Qiyuan added a self-cleaning foot station for robots coming back indoors. It also does video calls, follows children around the house, and shoots photos.
Qiyuan also published three robot models alongside the hardware: PrimeMotion for safe motion control, PrimeGo for cross-embodiment multimodal perception, and PrimeVista for natural-language interaction — the piece that lets a user talk to the robot instead of reaching for a remote. The robots connect to Tencent Cloud's WorkBuddy, which is the first time a Chinese consumer humanoid has shipped with a third-party agent platform wired in rather than a proprietary app.
The hardware underneath is where the cost story sits. Qiyuan built its own quasi-direct-drive joints — motor, reducer and encoder integrated into a package roughly the size of an egg — and is using lightweight composite materials from Swancor's existing materials business, with automotive-style production cadence and quality control on the line. That is the same playbook that has pushed Chinese humanoid pricing down all year: reuse a listed parent's manufacturing base, sell direct, and let the software layer come from an ecosystem instead of the factory.
Swancor opened pre-orders for both robots on August 23 with a 1,000 yuan deposit that took 2,000 yuan off the final price, alongside filings showing 210 million yuan already collected in advance robot payments. We covered that order book when it opened — Agibot-controlled Swancor opens orders for Qiyuan Q1 and T1 robots. Sunday's event converts the deposits into published prices and a ship date.
What to watch: whether the October 1 shipping date holds at volume, and whether Tencent's WorkBuddy integration gives Qiyuan an app ecosystem that rivals the skill store Unitree and Agibot are each building.
Would you put a $2,800 humanoid in your living room, or does the useful robot still live in a warehouse? Tell us in the comments.
Sources: 智东西 Zhidx · IT之家 ITHome · 新浪科技 Sina Tech · 第一财经 Yicai
