DroidUp Puts Moya’s Smile in Front of Care Homes

DroidUp unveiled Moya on January 30, 2026, a customizable humanoid built on its Walker 3 skeleton, at Zhangjiang Robot Valley in Shanghai.

The launch sold a nod, a swappable face, and a path into daily rooms. By September 2026 the same line had been walked into a community care center, and the company had signed a thousand-unit production pact for the biped under the skin.

Moya Is the Face on a Walker 3 Body

Moya is the human-facing kit. Under the modular shell sits Walker 3, the latest Xingzhe-series skeleton from Shanghai Zhuoyide Robotics, the legal name behind DroidUp. Founder Li Qingdu, a professor at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, has spent two decades on biped walking. The firm, started in 2021, now lists tendon drive and bionic faces as the core of a machine meant for care, reception, and performance work.

That split matters because the January show treated Moya as a single character. It is a costume on a family of walkers. Walker 2, also called X02 in DroidUp’s own account of firsts, is the light modular biped that took third at Beijing’s first humanoid half-marathon. Walker 3, shown at WAIC in July 2025 as a 1.7-meter machine of about 38 kg, is the volume chassis: 50 percent less energy than peers, on DroidUp’s figures, and a 6-hour dynamic runtime. Moya, at the launch, was listed at 1.65 meters and 32 kg, with a company gait claim of 92 percent against human walking and a face the firm put at 25 degrees of freedom.

DroidUp’s Walker name is its own Xingzhe line. It is not UBTECH’s Walker series, a collision that already confuses spec sheets.

THE DROIDUP BIPED LINE

Walker 3 is not a lighter Walker 2. It is heavier than the race machine and, on the July 2025 brief, uses a high-elastic shell DroidUp says can cut 90 percent or more of a collision’s force, with 30 active degrees of freedom if you leave the hands out. Lattice “muscle” and extra cooling are the bits the launch copy tied to marathon wear. Moya borrows that skeleton and puts a changeable body on it, including gender and look, so one chassis can be sold as more than one person.

The covering is the warm silicone skin and micro-expressions that make a close-range demo work. A cold plastic hand gives the game away in one greeting. DroidUp is selling the opposite of that flinch.

Walker II Finished the First Robot Half-Marathon

On April 19, 2025, 21 humanoid robots started a 21.1-kilometer race beside more than 12,000 people at the Beijing E-Town (Yizhuang) half-marathon. Six robots finished. Tiangong Ultra won in 2 hours 40 minutes. The men’s human winner did it in 1 hour 2 minutes. DroidUp’s Walker 2 took third. Li later said the team did not chase the podium.

In the marathon, we never aimed for rankings; our goal was to complete the entire course without a battery swap.

Li Qingdu, founder and CEO of DroidUp, September 2025 interview

Battery changes were legal. The winner used three. Most of the field overheated, fell, or needed tape and spray. Li’s point was simpler than a medal: if a biped dies in an hour, you cannot staff a shift. A robot that can finish 21.1 km, even slowly, has passed a boredom-and-heat test that a warehouse demo does not impose.

The same logic sits behind a much older walk. In 2015, Li’s lab machine, Xingzhe No. 1, covered more than 134 kilometers on 0.8 kWh across two days and three nights, a Guinness mark at the time. DroidUp still prints that record on its about page as a walk past 100 km. The half-marathon was the public version of that habit: keep the thing upright until the course runs out.

FROM THE 2015 WALK TO THE CARE PACT

1. 2015: Xingzhe No. 1 walks more than 134 km on 0.8 kWh and takes a Guinness certification.
2. 2021: DroidUp is founded in Shanghai after years of lab work in Yangpu.
3. 2024: Walker 2 ships as a tendon-driven modular biped; the company closes a 100 million yuan Series A (about $14 million).
4. April 19, 2025: Walker 2 finishes third at Yizhuang; 6 of 21 robots complete 21.1 km.
5. July 2025: Walker 3 debuts at WAIC at about 38 kg, and the firm says it will move headquarters into Zhangjiang Robot Valley.
6. January 30, 2026: Moya debuts as the customizable face at the Zhangjiang showroom opening.
7. July 19, 2026: DroidUp signs a thousand-unit mass-production pact with the Shanghai Humanoid Robot Pilot Service Platform.

A race bot in boxing gloves is a long way from a smiling attendant. The through-line Li keeps repeating is weight and safety. He has described the DroidUp biped as 1.7 meters and only around 30 kg, a baseline so a fall is less of a hospital event. That 30 kg figure tracks Walker 2. Walker 3 added mass. Moya, on launch figures, sits in the middle at 32 kg, still light enough to share a corridor with someone who uses a cane.

How Much Does DroidUp’s Moya Cost?

Circulating launch figures put Moya near 1.2 million yuan (about $173,000), eight times the 150,000 yuan Li Qingdu has called a healthy price for robots in care, greeting, and inspection. DroidUp has not posted a firm public list price. Early sheets have also put the first run near 50 units, with a late 2026 commercial start.

Li made the 150,000 yuan number in a September 16, 2025 interview, months before Moya’s face went on stage. He was talking about ordinary service work, not a prestige android. He compared a stable tag to a phone that does not lurch every year, and he warned that a race to tens of thousands of yuan wrecks after-sales. Elon Musk’s $30,000 consumer anchor, he said, is a different grade of machine.

I think around 150,000 yuan is a reasonable balance.

Li Qingdu, founder and CEO of DroidUp, September 2025 interview

If Moya really opens near 1.2 million yuan, it is not that balance-point robot. It is a halo SKU for hotels, museums, schools, and care groups that can pay for a handshake that holds heat. Walker 3, aimed at tours, inspection, industry, and healthcare, is the chassis Li described as heading for mass delivery in 2026. The smile and the volume line are priced on different planets.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Launch date: Moya debuted on January 30, 2026, at DroidUp’s Zhangjiang showroom opening.
• Li’s price view: He called about 150,000 yuan a healthy tag for care, greeting, and inspection work.
• Walker 3 brief: July 2025 figures were 1.7 m, about 38 kg, 6-hour runtime, 50 percent less energy than peers.
• Production talk: In September 2025 Li said several hundred units that year and 2,000 to 5,000 in 2026.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Moya list price: The 1.2 million yuan figure is circulating, not a posted DroidUp catalog number.
• First batch: Sheets that put the run near 50 units have not been matched by a company order book.
• 2026 deliveries: The 2,000 to 5,000 range was a target, not a disclosed shipment tally.
• Pre-orders: A late 2026 start is the window in launch coverage; a public storefront has not opened.

February 2026 added another round of about 100 million yuan, led by Shanghai Pudong Leading Zone Investment Center and Shanghai Zhangjiang Science and Technology Venture Capital. The money was described as going into mass production, elder-care markets, and robots for companionship, watch, and mental-care work. That is a buyer map, not a living-room map.

The Care Pilot Runs Through 2027

China’s home for this product is a state timetable, not a viral clip. On May 26, 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Civil Affairs signed notice 工信厅联通装函〔2025〕212号, opening intelligent elderly-care robot pilots for 2025 through 2027. The text is blunt about labor: raise life quality, cut family load, fill gaps in institutions and communities.

By the end of 2025, more than 320 million people in China were 60 or older, 23 percent of the population, with a path toward 400 million in a decade on Xinhua figures carried in later official coverage. A 50-unit prestige android does not move that number. A chassis that can stand for hours, fail safe, and pass a six-month trial might.

WHAT THE TWO MINISTRIES REQUIRE

• Settings: Home, community, and institutional care, including disability and dementia support, emotional company, health, smart rooms, and daily help.
• Home track: At least 200 households and at least 200 units, with a trial of no less than six months.
• Site track: At least 20 communities or 20 care institutions and at least 20 units, same six-month floor.
• Safety file: Makers must design for electrical, mechanical, interaction, battery, and data-privacy failures, keep staff on site, and file bimonthly trial reports.

Those unit counts are larger than a 50-piece first run and smaller than Li’s 2,000 to 5,000 target. A firm that wants the home track needs 200 bodies that survive six months in real apartments. A firm that wants the nursing-home track can start at 20. Moya’s custom face is a way to look acceptable in both, if the price ever comes down from the halo number.

Li’s mass-production test, stated at the 2025 Inclusion Bund Conference, was scenario and safety first. “If you don’t solve the scenario and safety challenges first, true mass production is impossible,” he said. The ministries wrote the same idea into a checklist. A robot that cannot document fail-safes does not get a trial badge.

Moya Turned Up in a Zhoujiadu Care Center

By early September 2026, Moya had been shown on the floor of Shanghai’s Zhoujiadu Street Community Comprehensive Elderly Service Center. That is the second-order destination the January copy only hinted at. A community care site is the kind of room the 2025-2027 pilot was written for: short visits, greetings, a body that can stand near a resident without looking like warehouse kit.

The clip that travels is still the handshake. Active heat, on launch figures, holds the skin at 32-36 C, in the range of a living arm. Once you have seen that, it is hard to go back to painted ABS. It is also the clip that gets read as a private companion. A female-presenting care android with a custom face picks up a second audience that nursing directors did not order. If the buyer is a street-level elderly-service center, that extra reading is a problem, not a feature.

DroidUp’s own site already lists elder-care companionship, emotional support, reception, and performance as live uses for its machines. On July 29, 2026, a National Natural Science Foundation of China team led by deputy director Lu Jianhua visited the Shanghai company on an intelligent eldercare brief. That visit is not a purchase order. It is a map of who is in the room when the product is explained.

Walker 2 even did a shift as an unmanned retail clerk at WAIC 2025, picking goods and pointing people to pay. The marathon third-placer as a shop assistant is the same bet in a louder costume: stay up, move slow, do not scare the customer. Moya is that bet with a pulse you can feel.

Zhengzhou Is the Factory Bet

R&D stays in Shanghai. Units, if they arrive, have to come from Henan. Li said DroidUp Humanoid Robot (Henan) Co., Ltd. in Zhengzhou exists to solve mass production. In September 2025 he put small-batch output that year in the hundreds and 2026 in a band of 2,000 to 5,000. He also said the second half of 2025 would be spent proving Walker 3 in tours, inspection, industrial sites, and healthcare, with scale delivery in 2026.

September 2026 is late in that year. Public, counted deliveries at the top of that band have not been laid out. The Zhengzhou story is still a plan with a factory attached. Other humanoid makers have been stacking plants in Henan at the same time, which is why a signing ceremony now does more work than a concept video.

Li’s five gates for a biped that can actually be sold are balance, efficiency, intelligence, safety, and cost. Safety sits first. Cost is last and, on his telling, should not be won by a price war. Tendon drive is how DroidUp argues it gets efficiency without stacking mass: cables and distributed motors instead of a heavy, stiff stack at every joint. Walker 3’s 50 percent energy cut is the number they hang on that choice. The marathon was the outdoor exam. Zhengzhou is the exam that decides whether Moya is a showroom piece or a line.

A Thousand-Unit Signing Still Has to Ship

On July 19, 2026, at a Shanghai forum on humanoid robots and embodied intelligence, DroidUp and the Shanghai Humanoid Robot Pilot Service Platform signed a thousand-unit mass-production deal. Xing Boyang, the platform’s chief technology officer, signed with Li, who the company now titles founder and chairman as well as CEO. DroidUp called it a step from fully bionic robots toward industrial output.

A thousand units is a rounder, more conservative figure than 2,000 to 5,000, and it is still many times a 50-piece halo batch. It is also a signing, not a loading dock. Moya remains the face you remember from January: a customizable humanoid robot Walker 3 build with a slow, social gait and a temperature you notice when you touch it. The Shanghai DroidUp Moya elder care humanoid pitch only works if those bodies can stand a six-month trial at a price a street care center can carry.

The July pact is dated. The late 2026 commercial start DroidUp has pointed to for Moya is still ahead, and the robots in that thousand-unit paper still have to clock shifts beside real patients.