Where to see a robot in Dubai before you buy one

Every robot on this site looks better in a video than it will in your hallway, and the only cure is to stand next to one. Dubai is unusually good for this. Within an afternoon you can meet a talking humanoid, book a demonstration of a walking one, and have dinner served by a robot with a cat's face.

The Museum of the Future

Start on the Tomorrow Today floor, where Ameca, the Engineered Arts humanoid, greets visitors and answers questions in Arabic, English and four other languages. It is the most expressive machine in the country, and the museum is the only place in the UAE you can talk to it, because Engineered Arts does not sell it to private buyers.

The museum shop then does something no other museum shop does: it sells a robot dog. The Unitree Go2 Pro is listed at AED 18,500 with free UAE shipping and click-and-collect. That is about AED 2,500 more than the marketplace listing on amazon.ae, in exchange for buying from a Dubai institution rather than a third-party seller.

The showrooms

Two Dubai distributors show humanoids and robot dogs by appointment. Ednex Automation carries the Unitree range, from the Go2 to the G1 and R1 humanoids, alongside the Pudu serving robots, and offers training and installation across the Gulf. YS Lootah Robotics lists the same Unitree line plus the AgiBot X2 and takes demo bookings through its site. Go with a question in mind, such as whether a G1 can carry a tray across your particular floor, because the answer is usually a version of "yes, once someone programs it".

The high street

For the small companions, Virgin Megastore is the place to see one switched on. Loona, the palm-sized pet robot, was AED 2,099 in store and AED 2,008 on amazon.ae when we checked. The Miko 3 and Miko Mini, the children's learning robots, sit on the same shelf at AED 1,199 and AED 599.

Dinner

The cat-faced Pudu BellaBot and its cousins are the robots most Dubai residents have already met without planning to, gliding between tables with trays. They are sold to businesses through Ednex, YS Lootah and EarthOne Technology, and a handful of villa owners do buy them for parties. Ask your favourite restaurant which one they run; the staff usually have opinions.

On the street

Dubai Police's patrol rovers are built by Micropolis Robotics, a Dubai company, and were shown again at Make it in the Emirates this year. You cannot buy one, but seeing a made-in-Dubai robot on a Dubai road is a useful corrective to the idea that all of this is imported.

The Makr Shakr robot bartender that opened at the Cavalli Club in 2019 and poured at Abu Dhabi Finance Week in 2023 is worth a mention for completeness. It is sold to venues and yachts, not households, and installations come and go, so ring before you go looking.

Addresses change and stock moves. Each robot's page in the collection carries the retailer link and the date we last looked.