China’s Unitree Robotics has rapidly expanded in the global robot-dog market using technology resembling research funded by the US military, Reuters reported on August 18, 2026. The report said Unitree’s popular Go-series quadruped robots closely resemble work on movement and design carried out at US universities and research institutions.

The US Army funded the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance from 2010 to 2020, involving MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, NASA and other institutions. Its findings were publicly released to advance robotics worldwide. Researcher Ben Katz said Unitree’s robot-dog design was nearly identical to MIT’s Mini Cheetah robot.

While US innovations did not move into large-scale production, China began mass-producing similar technology at lower cost. Unitree’s Go2 model, launched in 2023, was priced at about $1,600. The company says it sold more than 18,000 quadruped robots and over 5,500 humanoid robots last year. The United States recently added Unitree to a list of companies linked to China’s defense industry.