DroidUp reveals Moya, a biomimetic humanoid built around social interaction

DroidUp revealed Moya on January 30 at Zhangjiang Robot Valley in Shanghai, introducing a biomimetic humanoid designed around human-facing interaction. The company positions Moya as a high-end emotional companionship and service robot, with small-batch reservations expected in Q4 2026 and the first batch limited to 50 units. Reported pricing sits between RMB 1.2 million and RMB 1.5 million.

DroidUp, legally Shanghai Zhuoyide Robot Co., is a Shanghai robotics company focused on general humanoid robot development, production and sales. They are focused on two main product areas: biped humanoid robots and simulated expression robots, with stated application areas including research and education, cultural tourism performance, public services and industrial applications.

DroidUp moved its headquarters into Zhangjiang Robot Valley on the same day it presented Moya, placing the company inside one of Shanghai’s most visible embodied-intelligence clusters. Local reporting described the move as part of Zhangjiang’s broader humanoid and service-robotics ecosystem, which also includes companies and institutions working across components, software, manufacturing and system integration.

DroidUp describes Moya as a fully biomimetic embodied-intelligence robot, with the design centred on appearance, touch, expression and social interaction. The robot is reported at about 1.65 metres tall and 32 kilograms, with high-end silicone skin that can maintain a surface temperature between 32 and 36 degrees Celsius.

The head uses 25 degrees of actuation across the mouth, eyebrows, eyes and simulated facial muscles, allowing the robot to reproduce micro-expressions, eye movement and face-level emotional cues. The body is reported with 16 joint degrees of freedom and a claimed 92 percent human-like walking similarity, supported by 3D inertial navigation, foot pressure sensing, collision-absorbing soft body coverage and obstacle avoidance in less structured spaces.

The company’s Walker line drew attention in 2025 after taking third place in the world’s first humanoid half-marathon, and local reporting says the newer Walker 3 platform adds multimodal perception, sensor fusion across vision, lidar and depth cameras, dynamic balance, autonomous path planning and real-time obstacle avoidance.

The Launch

Many humanoid companies are competing around logistics, manufacturing, dexterity or general-purpose task execution; Moya is aimed at emotional companionship, healthcare, commercial reception, public service and long-duration human interaction. DroidUp says the series can be configured for commercial, care and companionship scenarios, which makes the robot closer to a social-service platform than a labour-replacement robot.

DroidUp announced a nearly RMB 100 million Pre-A+ round shortly after the launch, describing the funding as support for commercialisation and scaled application in areas including elder care and rehabilitation needs. The company has also said it plans to develop trial production lines in Zhangjiang Robot Valley and target production above 1,000 units this year, with founder and CEO Li Qingdu saying a stronger outcome could reach 2,000 to 3,000 units.

Moya has announced a first-batch reservation window and pricing guidance; these are pre-order plans rather than completed customer deployments.

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