Unitree founder expects major development of humanoid robot in 2025

China

Unitree founder expects major development of humanoid robot in 2025

2025-02-19 11:49 Last Updated At：19:57

Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of leading Chinese robotics firm Unitree, has expressed the belief that humanoid robots will see a significant development in 2025.

Speaking to reporters after attending Monday's symposium on private enterprises at which Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered an important speech, Wang said he expects the development of AI-powered humanoid robots to reach a new level by the end of this year.

"AI-powered robots are evolving very fast every day, faster than I expected, and giving me big surprises every day. We need to get the AI model of the robot right, and when it's right, it's just a matter of training it with better AI computing power, which has greatly accelerated technological progress in this area," said Wang.

Wang's company drew attention this year during the CMG Spring Festival Gala, where its robots, equipped with advanced speech recognition and emotional AI, performed a folk dance in cooperation with human dancers.

More software upgrades have been completed in the past 20 days since the gala, according to the entrepreneur.

"There were people helping the robots to leave the stage during the Spring Festival Gala, which was just to add to the fun and more interaction between robots and human dancers. Of course we just recently completed another software algorithm upgrade to the humanoid robot to make it dance more smoothly. The robots can now dance better than most people," said Wang.

Wang expects humanoid robots to enter the service industry very soon, but said it will take longer for them to become part of people's daily lives due to higher safety requirements.

"I personally believe that by the end of this year, the development of AI-powered humanoid robots will reach a new level. If things go well, I think we will see their application in the service industry or some industrial sectors next year or the year after. But the progress for humanoid robots for home might be a little slower because the higher safety requirements ask for more mature technology," said Wang.

He also expressed his excitement to join the symposium, saying he was inspired and encouraged by President Xi.

"It was a great honor for me, but of course there was also a lot of pressure, because I believe we should continue to work hard. All the entrepreneurs were inspired by General Secretary Xi, and everyone was in high spirits and had high morale," said Wang.

Holiday Day 2 sees 297.665 mln passenger trips

A total of 297.665 million inter-regional passenger trips nationwide were recorded on Saturday, the second day of the five-day May Day holiday this year, transport authorities said on Sunday.

The figure represents a 1.7 percent increase from the same day last year and a 11.8 percent decline from Friday, the first day of the break.

Railway passenger trips rose 1.2 percent from a year ago to 19.781 million, 20.4 percent down the previous day and up 1.2 percent year on year.

A total of 273.86 million road trips were reported on the day, an increase of 1.8 percent year on year, and 11.2 percent less from the previous day.

Among them, commercial passenger trips reached 39.40 million, an increase of 14.9 percent year on year, while non-commercial passenger trips reached 234.46 million, roughly the same as the previous year.

The waterways handled 2.096 million trips, marking a 1.3 percent decline year on year.

The civil aviation passenger trips stood at 1.928 million, down 11 percent from the previous year.

China's postal sector collected 474 million parcels, up 6.3 percent from the previous day, and delivered 493 million parcels, down 4.6 percent from the previous day.

The May Day holiday, running from May 1 to 5, is typically one of the busiest travel periods of the year. During this time, millions of Chinese passengers hit the road to visit family or go traveling.