Fourier unveils GR-3, its first care-centric humanoid robot

Fourier Intelligence launched GR-3 in Beijing on August 6, 2025, the third generation of its GRx humanoid series and its first robot designed explicitly for care, companionship, and emotional interaction rather than functional industrial work. Standing 165 centimetres tall and weighing 71 kilograms with 55 degrees of freedom, GR-3 is priced above 200,000 yuan and targets hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation centres, and commercial care environments.

The Company

Fourier was founded in 2015 in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park and spent its first several years building clinical rehabilitation robotics. Its core rehab products are now deployed in more than 2,000 hospitals and institutions across 40 countries. The company is named after the Fourier Transform, a mathematical method for decomposing complex signals into simpler underlying components; the name reflects its original mission of understanding human movement and translating it into mechanical systems.

Fourier's march into humanoid robotics began with a lower-limb exoskeleton in 2017. In 2023, it released GR-1, which became China's first humanoid robot to reach mass production. GR-2 followed in 2024 with improved mobility and doubled battery life. In early 2025, Fourier launched the N1, China's first verified open-source humanoid robot, and closed a Series E round worth nearly 800 million yuan, approximately $110 million, led by Guoxin Investment and Prosperity7.

The Product

GR-3's design logic differs visibly from GR-1 and GR-2. Where those robots used metal textures and industrial lines, GR-3 uses warm Morandi colour tones, soft fabric covering, animal head contours, and a soft-touch skin coating. Fourier described the design intent as reducing the psychological distance between users and the robot through changes at the tactile and visual level.

The robot combines multimodal perception across vision, audio, and touch with a dual-path response architecture; fast reflexes for immediate cues such as turning its head when called, and large-model reasoning for contextual dialogue and nuanced interaction. GR-3 supports emotion recognition, natural dialogue, health monitoring, and rehabilitation support. Dual hot-swappable batteries allow up to three hours of continuous operation without powering down.

The design choices are not aesthetic marketing. Fourier spent a decade deploying robots in hospitals and therapy centres where patient acceptance was not negotiable. The soft exterior, warm tones, and tactile response system come directly from that clinical experience, where emotional context and physical approachability determined whether a robot could function in the environment at all. GR-3 is a return to those conditions at full humanoid scale.

Market and Maturity

China's Association for the Aging reported that 29.7% of people aged 60 and above were living alone in 2024, with 42.3% of that group reporting emotional needs. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued guidelines in 2023 explicitly calling for expanded humanoid robot deployment in medical care and companion services.

Fourier CEO Gu framed the B2B care entry as commercially appropriate for the current stage: hospitals, community centres, and public-facing roles are ready, household adoption is not. GR-3 launched with public demonstrations and product specifications; no named institutional customers or deployment volumes were disclosed at launch.

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