EngineAI PM01 vs ergoCub

EngineAI PM01 is a compact Chinese bipedal research humanoid listed as 1.38 m, about 40 kg, 24 DOF, 2 m/s, with 320-degree waist rotation and a third-party video title claiming a front flip. Official sources confirm the platform and an official introduction video, but no payload, runtime, battery, hands, sensors, autonomy task execution, manipulation, or named customer deployments have been found. Price is uncertain: a third-party video title says $13,700, while a commonly cited 88,000 yuan launch price belongs to SE01, not PM01. Treat as a purchasable motion/research platform with low confidence on reliability and commercial readiness

ergoCub is IIT and INAIL's research humanoid, standing 150 cm tall, weighing 55.7 kg, and designed to reduce physical strain on workers in industrial and hospital settings. Its strongest evidence is a peer-reviewed Nature Machine Intelligence figure showing collaborative payload lifting with a human and live walking on stage. Official IIT sources confirm the 2023 debut and ergonomic purpose, while secondary dossiers report about 10 kg load-bearing, NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier plus Intel i7 onboard compute, depth/LiDAR sensing, and research claims such as up to 43% energy reduction and DNN-driven locomotion. However, no battery, runtime, walking speed, total DoF, hand DoF, price, or customer deployment exists in the reviewed evidence; autonomy is mostly simulation-only or title-only