Robot band to debut at World Humanoid Robot Games

A robot band presented by its developer based in Hefei City of east China's Anhui Province is set to make debut for global audiences at the opening ceremony of the World Humanoid Robot Games on Thursday, featuring a splendid fusion of technology and art.

Designed by a tech company from Hefei, the robot band consists of five robot "musicians" playing a keyboard, a lead guitar, drum and bass, and a rhythm guitar. Requiring no scores, the robot band members can perform solos and ensembles with smooth, flowing precision, thanks to their shared computing "brain" that analyzes scores and notes in real time.

"This is a page of musical score in staff notation. After our robot processes it electronically, it proceeds to an intelligent analysis of motions. Take the folk song Fengyang Flower Drum as an example. At 2.67 seconds, (our keyboardist) presses the 53rd and 60th keys with the second and sixth fingers of its left hand, and steps on the sustain pedal. All these motions are concluded to be a single action, guided by one instruction. For a three-minute song, the robot will generate about 1,000 instructions," said Wu Chao, a research and development engineer from Hefei Panshi Technology, who created the robot band.

The robot band will play a vital part at the opening ceremony of the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, the first-ever international sports festival for humanoids. To prepare for the event, engineers also upgraded the hardware for band members, replacing pneumatic joints with motor-driven ones to handle faster rhythms.

For the future, researchers hope to make the robots more human-like, suitable for music teaching.

"Our two guitarists and bassist use full-fret pneumatic cylinders to press chords, while our more anthropomorphic keyboardists and drummer have extra fingers and arms. Next, we aim to develop more human-like arms for faster, more interactive playing, and equip each robot with AI dialogue so they can converse directly with people," Wu said.

Robot band to debut at World Humanoid Robot Games

China has remained the world's largest online retail market for a 13th consecutive year, with its digital consumption exceeding 23.8 trillion yuan (about 3.39 trillion U.S. dollars), official data shows.

The figure was released at a national e-commerce work conference held from Tuesday to Wednesday.

The conference said that China's e-commerce sector has achieved solid gains in high-quality development over the past five years, emerging as a new source of momentum to foster new quality productive forces and playing an important role in advancing the country's new development paradigm.

Despite rising external uncertainties, China has continued to expand its win-win cooperation, increasing the number of Silk Road e-commerce cooperation partner countries to 36.

E-commerce has become a major engine for job creation and industrial upgrading. Employment in the sector has surpassed 78 million, and express delivery volumes have seen an average annual growth of nearly 20 percent over the past five years.

Software and information services linked to cloud computing and big data have also expanded rapidly.

The conference outlined the Ministry of Commerce's e-commerce policy priorities for 2026, including strengthening innovation-driven growth, improving the country's development environment, and expanding international cooperation.

China remains world's largest online retail market for 13th straight year