Unitree G1, Pepper, NAO or robot dog: which robot for your event?

The comparison, family by family

The word “robot” covers machines that have almost nothing in common, whether in capabilities, price or their effect on an audience. Here are the four families actually offered for event hire in France, with the public price ranges recorded on the French market in July 2026.

A useful way to read this table: the first three families do something, the fourth produces an effect. A service robot hands out flyers better than a humanoid; a bipedal humanoid hands out nothing but stops people in an aisle. These are two different jobs, not two price ranges.

Why “humanoid robot” means nothing in a quote

This is the most common trap on the market, and it is not always deliberate. The term humanoid robot covers a tablet mounted on a wheeled base just as well as a machine that walks, regains its balance after a push and climbs steps. The price gap is one to five. The gap in effect on an audience is greater still.

The difference comes down to one thing: walking. A bipedal robot is never in passive balance: it falls as soon as its motors stop correcting its posture, several hundred times per second. That is what made these machines hard to produce for twenty years, and it is what the public perceives immediately, without being able to name it.

The practical consequence: insist on the manufacturer and the model reference, in writing, in the quote. It is the only piece of information that commits the provider. “Latest-generation humanoid robot” commits no one.

Choose according to the effect you want

Start from what you want to happen, not from what the machine can do. Four situations cover the vast majority of requests.

• You want traffic to your stand in a hall with several hundred exhibitors: you need to be visible from the aisle, above people's heads. Only an adult-sized humanoid that moves around meets that condition. A tabletop device can only be seen from three metres away.
• You want the public to make videos: you need a scene unusual enough for taking out a phone to feel justified. It is a threshold, and most entertainment does not reach it. A biped walking towards someone crosses it.
• You want to provide a service (handing out items, guiding, keeping people occupied while they wait): a service robot does this better and for less. Do not pay for a humanoid to carry a tray.
• You want curiosity on a contained budget, on difficult ground or outdoors: the robot dog is the answer. It gets over what a biped cannot, and it costs three to five times less.

If your need is first and foremost to display messages or offers to passing footfall, none of these four families is optimal: that is the territory of the media robot, a mobile screen-based medium that goes to meet the public rather than waiting for it.

What the table does not tell you

Three constraints appear on no spec sheet and yet decide whether a service succeeds.

• The floor. A biped walks on a flat, smooth, clear floor: fitted carpet, parquet, polished concrete, marble. Not gravel, sand, grating or very uneven boards. This is validated in advance, from photos if necessary, never on the day.
• The operator. A bipedal humanoid is controlled by a trained operator throughout the service. This is not an option: it is what ensures public safety and the quality of interactions. A provider who bills it as an extra is advertising a headline price that corresponds to no real service.
• Battery life. It is counted in hours and melts away with continuous walking. The right question is not “what is the battery life?” but “how much actual presence time for the robot, and with how many batteries?”.

A fourth, more insidious constraint: continuous presence. A device that is visible without interruption for eight hours stops being noticed after half an hour; visitors who arrive later perceive it as furniture. Timed appearances produce the opposite effect, and the wait itself becomes a signal.

Five questions to ask before you sign

• Who is the manufacturer and what is the exact model reference? If the answer stays vague, so is the rest of the quote.
• Is the operator included in the advertised price, or billed as an extra?
• How much actual presence time for the robot, rather than what span of hours?
• Is travel included, charged at a flat rate or billed at cost? It is the item that most often makes an invoice drift, especially when the equipment comes from abroad.
• Can I see a real video of this specific model, filmed by you and not by the manufacturer?

That last question is the most discriminating, and also the easiest to ask. A manufacturer's video shows a machine in laboratory conditions; a video shot by the provider shows what you will get. Here is ours, filmed in the streets of Paris, with no special effects:

To go further on budgets by type of event and the hidden costs of the market, our price survey of the French market details the ranges family by family and what a serious rate should cover: how much does it cost to hire a robot for an event.