On 5 December 2025, at the Greater Bay Area New Economy Forum, the Chinese group Midea unveiled a robot called MIRO U, which it describes as a humanoid robot, according to the media outlet Interesting Engineering. The billing that comes with the machine is a catchy one: six arms. But look closely and this robot tells another story altogether, the story of a word, "humanoid", that no longer means very much.
Six arms, but no legs
Let's start with the shape, because that's the intriguing part. According to Interesting Engineering, the MIRO U has a humanoid-style head and torso, but it doesn't walk: it gets around on a wheeled chassis, not on legs. And it doesn't have two arms like us, but six fully motorised bionic limbs (that is, articulated arms driven by motors), capable of carrying out three tasks at once.
Let's recap. A humanoid, in the original sense of the word, is a machine that imitates the human body: two legs, two arms, a head. The MIRO U, by contrast, has a head and an upper body, but it rolls instead of walking and carries three pairs of arms. In other words, on the two points that really define our anatomy – the number of arms and walking on two legs – it does precisely the opposite. What we have is a mobile machine tool to which a head and a torso have been bolted on so that it looks vaguely like someone.
Why this shape, of all shapes?
And this is where the choice gets interesting, because it actually makes sense. If a machine has to do three things at once on an assembly line, six arms beat two. If it has to move across a flat, smooth factory floor, wheels are simpler, steadier and cheaper than legs. So the shape of the MIRO U isn't a failed humanoid: it's an admission, by the engineering itself, that the human silhouette isn't the best one for the job in hand.
Which leaves one simple question: why carry on calling this thing a humanoid? The answer probably owes less to the technology than to the marketing. "Humanoid" has become a sales label, prised loose from anatomy. You stick a head and an upper body on an industrial robot, and the magic word does the rest.
A washing-machine maker building its own robot
The other surprise lies elsewhere. Midea is no specialist in humanoid robotics: at heart it's a white-goods giant, a maker of washing machines and air conditioners. Yet, according to Interesting Engineering, the MIRO U is due to enter a testing phase in Midea's own high-end washing-machine factory in Wuxi by the end of December 2025.
That detail says a great deal. Rather than buying a robot from a specialist firm, Midea is building its own, for its own production lines. In plain terms, the manufacturer is bringing robotics in-house instead of farming it out. This is what's called vertical integration: doing for yourself, internally, what you could order from outside. To put it simply: it's like a baker deciding to build his own oven, made to measure, rather than buying one off the shelf.
And that famous 30 per cent gain?
It's also credited with some headline figures. Again according to Interesting Engineering, the MIRO U should deliver roughly 30 per cent more efficiency during production changeovers – those moments when a line has to switch from one model to another and every minute counts. The figure is being touted before the trials, and it comes from a single source: so it should be taken as the maker's own estimate, to be checked under real-world conditions, not as a result that has already been measured.
At bottom, the MIRO U is less the world's first six-armed robot than a neat illustration of a creeping trend: the word "humanoid" now serves as a marketing sticker, even when the machine rolls around and carries three pairs of arms. The real story isn't in the superlative, but in what it conceals: a shape dictated by the task rather than by our own silhouette, and a household-appliance maker that is quietly building its own factory robots, all by itself.