Chinese humanoid robot startups are moving beyond choreographed demonstrations and into factories and retail stores, racing to secure real-world deployments that could eventually scale to tens of thousands of machines.
The shift gained further momentum on Tuesday when the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council launched a nationwide initiative to accelerate humanoid robot adoption across manufacturing, logistics, retail, healthcare and other sectors.
The initiative aims to create more than 100 high-value application scenarios by the end of 2026 and drive large-scale deployment of more than 10,000 humanoid robots, underscoring China's ambition to turn humanoid robots into a new pillar of industrial growth.
Among the early movers is Beijing-based Robotera, whose humanoid robots have already been deployed in more than 10 logistics centers operated by China Post and SF Holding across North, East and South China.
In a facility in Beijing on Wednesday, a Robotera humanoid robot packed products into cardboard boxes. When an item was unexpectedly removed from the box, the robot immediately detected the change, retrieved the object and completed the task again.
