Gasgoo Munich- Vbot has officially kicked off its global expansion, with Japan selected as the first stop for its overseas rollout.
Specifically, Vbot signed a strategic partnership with Japanese robotic solutions provider Future Robotics. Over the next three years, the partners will expand jointly in the Japanese market, with initial orders valued at 1 billion yuan.
Image Source: Vbot
Founded in August 2015 and headquartered in Tokyo, Future Robotics was established by core members of Waseda University’s robotics research group. That group, launched by Professor Ichiro Kato in the 1970s, was among the world’s first to pioneer humanoid robot research.
Building on that research legacy, Future Robotics focuses on five key areas: adapting to a super-aged society, human-machine collaborative manufacturing, post-disaster reconstruction, smart medical services, and public welfare. The firm offers end-to-end capabilities, spanning needs analysis and application development to project execution.
Future Robotics has already acquired Vbot’s flagship quadruped robot development platform, the Da Tou EDU edition. Moving forward, the partner will leverage the platform’s open hardware capabilities to develop localized applications and validate scenarios—specifically in elderly care and rural public services.
As Vbot’s newly released flagship quadruped platform, the Da Tou EDU edition inherits the integrated hardware-software capabilities refined for living spaces. It comes standard with 128 TOPS of edge computing power, a depth stereo camera, and a 16-line LiDAR. With ROS 2 and five types of development interfaces open to partners, developers can build applications and deploy solutions directly—without the need to construct a robot from scratch.
Image Source: Vbot
In Vbot’s view, elderly care and wellness represent the primary demand driver for quadruped robots. Whether it’s daily companionship, reminders, mobility assistance, or transport, aging societies are seeing a growing need for flexible, sustainable service solutions.
Consequently, beyond Japan, Vbot is simultaneously advancing pre-research and pilot projects in China and Singapore. Target scenarios include elderly care communities, wellness hospitals, and retirement villages.
Looking at the global market, Vbot plans to accelerate the build-out of online and offline retail channels, global logistics warehousing, and after-sales networks across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and key Asian markets like Singapore and South Korea. The company is also integrating with mainstream international cloud services and large language models to streamline the entire chain—from ordering and delivery to localized after-sales—speeding up the entry of robots into living spaces worldwide.
