Why China is leading the world in the humanoid robotic race
Hundreds of lifelike robots march in unison before being sent across China in what’s being dubbed the “world’s first mass delivery” of industrial humanoid robots.
The global robot race is heating up.
Some of the world’s largest superpowers have been tinkering away, making advancements in humanoid robotics.
“Alongside AI, humanoid robotics is one of the biggest races that’s happening at the moment,” Dr Alan Burden, a postdoctoral research fellow in design robotics at the Australian Cobotics Centre, told news.com.au.
“It is a very exciting time.”
While Japan, Europe and the US have been making gains in the development of humanoids — robots that look human with arms and legs – China has been leading the pack.
“China has decided that it wants a big stake in making humanoids,” said Dr Burden.
“This has created a general push and a small friendly rivalry between large superpowers and other countries to start pushing in and seeing how far they can take this technology.”
This month, a Chinese robot celebrated a big milestone, setting a Guinness World Record for the longest distance ever walked by a humanoid robot.
The AgiBot A2 set off from the city of Suzhou in China’s east, on November 10, before making the record-setting 106.286 km three-day journey across highways and bridges to North Bund, Shanghai, on November 13.
The impressive feat came as a different Chinese robotics company, UBTECH, claimed it had rolled out the “world’s first mass delivery” of industrial humanoid robots.
The company said the life-size bots, the Walker S Series, will be sent to various companies in the automotive manufacturing and logistics sectors for frontline industrial applications.
“World’s first mass delivery of humanoid robots has (been) completed! Hundreds of UBTECH #WalkerS2 have been delivered to our partners,” the company wrote on X, alongside footage of its robot fleet marching in formation.
“The future of #industrial automation is here.”
The impressive scenes bare a stark difference from those coming out of Russia, whose humanoid robots have recently gone viral for different reasons.
Earlier this month, the nation’s first AI-powered humanoid robot made international headlines after it fell face-first during its debut in Moscow.
Footage shared widely on social media shows the robot, Aldol, being led on stage to the soundtrack from the film Rocky, before it suddenly lost its footing and collapsed face-first in front of crowds.
Developers quickly scrambled to pick up the bot before it was dragged behind a curtain and led off stage.
Vladimir Vitukhin, the CEO of the robotics firm Idol, blamed the fall on calibration issues, noting the robot remained in its testing phase.
“I hope that this mistake will turn into an experience,” he said.
Days later, footage again went viral of a different Russian humanoid robot, designed by Sberbank, dancing with Vladimir Putin at an artificial intelligence conference in Moscow. The Russian President looked less than impressed.
“I am the first Russian humanoid robot equipped with embedded artificial intelligence,” the Robot, which introduced itself as Green, told Mr Putin, before putting on a dance performance as the stone-faced Russian leader watched on.
“Very beautiful,” said Mr Putin after the dance. “Thank you.”
Surge in humanoid robots
Aside from dancing with world leaders, videos of robots working in factories, walking on a catwalk, and even running a marathon have been doing the rounds on social media, as the global fascination with the machines continues to surge.
Dr Burden said humanoids are a hot topic right now thanks to the current “convergence” in technological advancements.
“The idea of the humanoid has been around since science fiction, and so has this fascination that we could build a machine that looks like us and works like us,” he said.
“The reason why it is very hyped up is that there’s a bit of a convergence at the moment, everything has come together at exactly the right time.”
“You’ve got better batteries, all the little motors that make them work more efficiently now. You’ve also got computer vision, so all the senses that a humanoid would need to be able to judge distance and colour and balance the same as us, all work very well now. And then of course you’ve got generative AI, which is coming up as well, and helps control the robot.”
According to global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, funding for general-purpose robots, including humanoids, has boomed since 2022 and now surpasses $1 billion annually.
Global financial services firm Morgan Stanley predicts that the humanoid robot market will continue to surge and could reach $5 trillion by 2050, with more than one billion humanoid robots sold – 90 per cent of which will be used for industrial and commercial purposes.
Why China is leading the world
China – which hosted the World Humanoid Robots Games earlier this year – is leading the charge in the space, thanks to it’s robust infrastructure and strong government backing.
In 2023, Beijing unveiled a national plan to build a world-class humanoid robotics industry by 2027.
The government further announced this year it would establish a one trillion yuan ($214 billion) fund to support start-ups in areas such as AI and robotics.
“China leads in human robotics because they’ve made rapid and highly visible progress in the last three to five years,” said Dr Burden.
“The momentum comes from a combination of factors. You’ve got government investment on a very large scale in robotics and other industries that support robotics, and you’ve got a strong industrial policy.”
Dr Burden said China also has “an enormous domestic robotics market”, noting the “Chinese public has a hunger for it”.
“There’s an interest in everything in manufacturing including social robotics as well. When you combine the funding, the scale of implementation and that culture of rapid prototyping and development, then you get a very fast iteration cycle.”
According to Morgan Stanley, 31 Chinese companies unveiled 36 new humanoid models last year, while the US only released eight.
Just this month, Chinese electric vehicle company Xpeng caught the world’s attention when it unveiled a humanoid robot so eerily lifelike that engineers were forced to cut it open to prove it was, in fact, a robot.
Chinese robotics company Unitree Robotics also celebrated an advancement this month, launching its first humanoid robot on wheels – the G1-D, which is designed to perform manual operations in retail spaces, warehouses and service areas.
Advancements in the space are only set to continue, with China likely to have the highest number of humanoid robots in use by 2050, at 302.3 million, while the US trials behind at 77.7 million, Morgan Stanley predicts.
Russia playing catch-up
While China surges ahead, Dr Burden said Russia is very much “playing catch-up” in the humanoid space.
“Russia is relatively a newcomer for humanoids … developers are still learning what humanoid robots are doing.”
Pointing to the tumble of Russia’s Aldol robot, he said “failures are obviously going to be part of the process” but noted the nation is “quite far behind” compared to the US, China, and Japan.
“I’m not entirely sure what their endgame will be. I would say that at the moment they’re in version one territory … so they’re still producing prototypes. But the fact that they have produced a robot does show that they are actually interested and we should look at this as their way of signalling an interest in the global race to develop their own humanoids within their own boundaries.”
Dr Burden said the US would be China’s closest rival for now, noting the nation is “leading in high-end AI control systems through Silicon Valley” and pointing to Tesla’s Optimus robot – which has been designed to be a general purpose humanoid worker.
“The US have had a much longer time developing humanoid robots,” he said.
“There is a strong push for the Optimus robot to be one of the market leaders over there … so they’re looking at what they’re calling a full stack of AI. So, they’re involving AI in many of the systems of that robot from the vision to the neural network so that the robots will be able to learn from each other.
“Recent demonstrations show it walking very smoothly, being very precise in how it manipulates objects and folding clothes, which is always a very difficult task for a robot to do.”
The future of humanoids
Looking to the future, Dr Burden predicts we will see humanoid robots initially rolled out on an industrial level, filling roles in agriculture or taking up dangerous jobs in mining and construction.
“On the other side of that, you’ve got the social aspects of humanoids where you’d be able to help take care of an ageing population, so we might see more social robots within aged care facilities or in health care as support for other specialised professions. Those are the targets at the moment for humanoids, but they could end up anywhere, really.”
“I think the end goal here is the idea that we could actually have a humanoid robot taking care of some of those difficult or dull tasks within our day-to-day lives that we don’t want to do … If the robot’s taking care of the dishes or the washing or the laundry, that will give you the chance to paint that picture or learn the guitar or whatever you want to do.”
As for the rivalry between nations, Dr Burden doesn’t think every country will strive to keep up with the big players in rolling out various humanoids, instead, “we’ll see a lot of interest in supporting how humanoids are made”.
“It’s probably more likely that we’ll see countries target certain areas, particularly if they don’t have the capabilities to match the manufacturing at the same scale, so they might produce, for example, parts or components for a humanoid, which might be world-class that everybody wants. Or it might be that it will produce humanoid robots that are very, very specialised for certain tasks as well. “
“There’s a lot of robotics companies that come from Europe, Japan and South Korea. All of these countries I think, will want to have a piece of the pie in humanoids at some point. And they’ll probably all be looking towards how they could kind of capitalise on that market as well.”
