A staff member synchronizes robot actions at Leju Robotics in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, March 27, 2025. (Xinhua/Liu Yongzhen)
BEIJING, May 22 (Xinhua) -- As Chinese internet giants venture into robotics, China's "humanoid robot +" sector is gaining development momentum.
Leveraging their extensive business ecosystem and scenario advantages, these industry leaders are developing diverse application scenarios for embodied intelligence, an advanced technology emphasizing intelligent agents like robots achieve autonomous learning and evolution through dynamic interactions with their environments.
-- Internet giants vying for embodied intelligence market
Chinese internet giant Tencent has partnered with robotics firms such as AgiBot, Dobot, Weilan, and Kepler, revealed Tencent Vice President Li Qiang at the Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit held in Guangzhou City, south China's Guangdong Province on May 16.
On May 12, Tencent Cloud and Dobot signed an agreement to deepen strategic cooperation. The partnership focuses on three key areas: R&D for embodied intelligence systems and humanoid robots, scenario-based applications, and industrial innovation, aiming to accelerate large-scale deployment of humanoid robots beyond laboratory settings across industrial, commercial and household environments.
"Having initiated robotics algorithm and product R&D in 2018, Tencent has developed an open-source platform featuring data co-building, algorithm capability and simulation environments," Li Qiang said, adding that the company has made breakthroughs through corporate partnerships in domains including robot brain training, intelligent control, and remote interaction.
Industry insiders highlight the synergy between Tencent's strengths in intelligent computing power, cloud-based large model and technological ecosystem and Dobot's humanoid robotics expertise, predicting this alliance will expedite the industrialization process of embodied intelligence and humanoid robots globally.
On the same day, tech giant Huawei and UBTech Robotics unveiled plans to collaborate in embodied intelligence and humanoid robots, with focus on product and technology R&D, scenario-based applications and industrial systems. The two sides will establish a joint center for embodied intelligence innovation while launching a "humanoid robot + smart plant" demonstration solution.
Internet company Baidu AI Cloud has also teamed up with many leading humanoid robot businesses including AgiBot and Unitree, providing products and solutions such as computing power platform, large model development tools, cloud-based simulation platform and embodied data collection and labelling.
-- Embodied intelligence applied in many scenarios at faster pace
China's embodied intelligence ecosystem is expected to be integrated into manufacturing and household sectors at a faster pace as internet heavyweights and other industry leaders leverage their commercial ecosystems and scenario advantages.
China's home appliance giant Midea Group on May 6 welcomed a special "employee" at its washing machine factory located in Jingzhou City, central China's Hubei Province. That's Midea's self-developed humanoid robot "MIRO-1". This robot, measuring 1.9 meters in height and 68 kilograms in weight, was officially put into industrial use on the day, marking the entry of domestically-developed service robots into the core fields of intelligent manufacturing.
Midea started its foray into the robotics in 2015, with hopes of harnessing the technology to make its home appliances smarter while gaining a strategic foothold in the futuristic industry of smart robots.
In this March, the group unveiled a humanoid robot prototype capable of performing a variety of movements, including shaking hands, dancing, tightening screws, as well as understanding voice commands and doing operations as instructed.
"We expect that the humanoid robot can be applied and commercialized in specific scenarios such as industry and manufacturing," said Wei Chang, vice president and chief technology officer of Midea.
Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) maker XPeng has recently advanced its robotics program with the industrial deployment of self-developed humanoid robot IRON for field testing at a factory. This robot is expected to be mass produced by 2026, according to He Xiaopeng, Chairman and CEO of XPeng. In He's view, robots should first enter industries before entering households, and he expects human-robot collaboration in factories to optimize manufacturing efficiency in the future.
Meanwhile, Huawei's alliance with Leju Robotics (Leju) was strengthened last year, with Kuavo, the latest humanoid robot of Leju and the first humanoid robot equipped with Huawei's distributed operating system HarmonyOS in China, making its debut at the Huawei Developer Conference 2024. Empowered by an embodied intelligence large model, Kuavo features omni-directional visual perception and adaptive locomotion across various terrains.
Leju's robots have been used in a number of scenarios including scientific research, intelligent exhibition, automotive manufacturing and intelligent manufacturing. In January this year, Leju reported the milestone of delivering 100 humanoid robots for industrial use. These robots are expected to meet the goals set by Leju of working continuously for 1,500 hours or more than 12 hours a day for about 100 days after entering factories.
"From the perspective of industrial integration, the internet industrial chain and the humanoid robot business are highly complementary. Internet companies can apply their technologies like AI, cloud computing and big data to humanoid robot R&D to seize the opportunities presented by the next-generation human-machine interaction and avoid falling behind in the potentially disruptive technology area. As humanoid robot is the best carrier of embodied intelligence, internet companies' investment in robotics may reshape the industrial landscape," said Pan Helin, member of the Expert Committee for Telecommunication Economy of the Ministry of Industrial and Information Technology.
The investments from industry-leading companies are pushing ahead the development of embodied intelligence. The scale of China's embodied intelligence market reached 863.4 billion yuan in 2024, and the figure is expected to hit 973.1 billion yuan in 2025, according to the research firm AskCI Consulting.
"The prosperity of AI and embodied intelligence is by no means a solo performance of any single player. Instead, it requires collaborative innovation throughout the industrial chain," Li Qiang said. He further explained that for China's embodied intelligence technology to gain a firm foothold both domestically and globally, wisdom and strength of all stakeholders need to be pooled together for areas ranging from algorithm R&D and hardware manufacturing to scenario exploration and market expansion.
(Edited by Su Dan with Xinhua Silk Road, sudan@xinhua.org)
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