Hao Cheng, Booster Robotics founder and CEO, discusses affordable humanoids, developer tools, and future applications with The Humanoid Hub in San Francisco.
Cheng traces his interest in humanoids to high school and his work on soccer-playing robots at Tsinghua University. After building a calendar app that reached over 10 million users and was acquired by ByteDance in 2017, he returned to robotics with Booster in 2024. The company aims to make robots affordable, useful, and durable, much like personal computers.
Cheng says Booster began selling robots early to collect requirements and improve the products through repeated use. Soccer and boxing applications have exposed weaknesses in durability, cameras, and movement. Booster also wants to provide a platform and development ecosystem, so customers can build their own applications.
Cheng sees an accessible operating system, API, and development environment as essential for bringing more engineers into robotics. Booster wants developers to be able to create a basic agent in a day, without needing to master difficult Linux and ROS workflows first. Near-term ideas include sports, dancing, storytelling, and a K1 that plays soccer with children.
Cheng describes humanoid movement, vision-language navigation, and interaction as key capabilities for a major leap in robotics; he expects manipulation to be another important milestone. Booster offers different hand and gripper configurations and is open to supporting third-party designs. He credits China's supply chain and early sales of hundreds of robots with helping lower costs, while saying global collaboration will matter as the industry grows.
Cheng imagines humanoids helping at home with tasks such as carrying things and assisting children or older adults, as well as taking on some factory and delivery work. He sees the next 10 to 20 years bringing major social changes and argues that building the ecosystem should involve people and partners around the world.
Briefs summarise talks and interviews; timestamps open the video at that moment. Claims in a talk are the speaker's own.
Denis Rogov, host of Денис Рогов PRO Технологии, tours the World Robot Conference in Beijing and discusses robotics companies, products, and prices with exhibitors.
PRO ROBOTS examines humanoid and other robotics shown at ICRA 2026 in Vienna, focusing on Chinese companies and products alongside demonstrations from South Korea, Vietnam, and NVIDIA.
Chaoyi Li of Booster Robotics presents at Humanoids Summit on building affordable humanoid platforms and a developer ecosystem to expand practical uses for robots.
PRO ROBOTS’ main presenter covers humanoid, service, industrial, and healthcare robots at China’s 2025 World Robot Conference, with demonstrations and interviews from exhibitors.
