China Stages Robot Carnivals to Win Over Skeptics
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Chinese firms manufactured nearly 90% of the more than 13,000 two-armed, two-legged robots delivered globally last year, and the country made embodied AI a key facet of its latest five-year plan to weave the technology into daily life.
- A robot "carnival" at an R&D hub on Shanghai's outskirts drew crowds of families during a public holiday, with children buying mini robotic dogs, watching water-bead duels between remote-controlled bots, and cheering humanoids performing drunken boxing and front flips.
- The hosting hub houses more than 100 companies that research, develop, manufacture, and market robotic technologies and equipment, including specialized bots that transport heavy loads or inspect sewage pipes.
- DexForce product manager Yang Duan told attendees his company's humanoid "can free people from physical work and mundane chores"; the model demonstrated making coffee while another booth's robotic arms folded T-shirts.
- Other Chinese cities host similar showcases — Beijing bipedal robots now run half-marathons, and malls and tourist attractions nationwide feature performing humanoids as part of a wider PR push.
- Global skepticism persists: roboticists elsewhere cite slow progress, safety challenges from weight and balance, high prices, short battery life, and doubts that a human form is even the best shape for a robot to take.
Why it matters: China's humanoid makers already dominate global shipments — roughly 90% of the 13,000 two-armed, two-legged robots delivered last year — yet the industry's commercial case remains unproven, so firms are leaning on mass public spectacles to normalize the technology before consumers and regulators elsewhere buy in.
Ask SkimNews
