China's humanoid robots step toward practical use

Humanoid robots have stepped into public view across various sectors in China over the past year, whether in industrial manufacturing or street corner shops.

Since early 2025, videos of these robots have trended on social media. They have performed folk dances at the Spring Festival gala, labored on factory floors, run marathons and even stepped into boxing rings.

Over the past year, China's humanoid robot industry moved from a phase of technological novelty to one of increasingly wide social deployment.

In Beijing, some convenience stores equipped with robots working as waiters have quietly made their debut.

From greeting customers, taking orders to delivering goods, the entire process can be completed by robots independently.

"It's faster in movements than the last time I came for shopping about two months ago. It has been constantly training its brain every day. The more data it has, the more accurately it can perform, and thus it will be faster," said a customer.

Nowadays, more than 100 such robots have been put into use across the country, covering multiple scenarios such as convenience stores and pharmacies.

"The pharmacy is only a warehouse in operation 24 hours a day. It doesn't need a storefront, as it mainly deals with delivery staff and online orders. There are two or three such pharmacies nearby. If you place an order to buy medicine, it's possible that robots pick it for you," said Fu Qiang, co-founder of Galbot, a cutting-edge startup building robot with embodied artificial general intelligence.

In a factory producing connectors for home appliances in Wenzhou City, east China's Zhejiang Province, four wheeled humanoid robots shuttle between the production lines every day, delivering the products to the quality inspectors.

"The temperature in the injection molding workshop is extremely high in summer. Now with the help of robots, we just need to sit in air-conditioned room and focus on doing our work," said Zhang Tianqi, a quality inspector in the factory.

From pilot projects in individual factories to large-scale implementation, humanoid robots are accelerating their pace to enter industrial production.

"With the widespread use of humanoid robots, I think some new jobs will emerge. For instance, robot algorithm engineers, robot operation and maintenance engineers, after-sales engineers, and industry solution engineers. New services and new business forms in the future will bring about new jobs, definitely a result far more than substitution effect," said Wu Zhi, a project leader with Ubtech, a humanoid robot developer in China.

"Whether in industry or in the service sector, if humanoid robots are put into use, human workers will be accordingly required to know artificial intelligence and operate intelligent devices. There will also be more and more such intelligent robots doing these arduous tasks for us. So I believe that the application of this advanced technology will make our life better," said Zhao Xiaoguang, a researcher with the Institute of Automation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China's humanoid robots step toward practical use

Dawa Yangdron, an early participant in a large-scale afforestation project in southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region, has led her team in using native seedlings, which boast higher survival rates and lower maintenance costs, to restore barren highland slopes, showing a locally adapted approach to ecological restoration.

The afforestation project in the mountains to the north and south of Lhasa, the first large-scale tree planting and afforestation initiative in the history of Xizang, aims to complete 2.0672 million mu (about 137,813 hectares) of land greening over a period of 10 years since its launch in 2021.

Yangdron, general manager of Xizang Zangjian Wusheng Greening Co., is one of the earliest builders who joined the decade-long project in 2022. She has led her team at Xizang's largest native seedling breeding base, where they are dedicated to growing indigenous trees.

"This is the largest native seedling breeding base in Xizang. It covers 80 hectares and stores the seeds of more than 70 species of local plants. After collecting the seeds from across the region, we cultivate them here. On the one hand, the base supports early-stage scientific research. On the other, it supplies seedlings for the afforestation project in the mountains to the north and south of Lhasa," Yangdron said.

"When we talk about native seedlings, we mean seedlings that originated here. We've recruited more than 100 college graduates and are training local students from Xizang to research and cultivate indigenous species. To date, we've supplied 10 million native seedlings for the afforestation project. Using local seedlings for afforestation has clear advantages. The survival rate's higher, and subsequent maintenance costs are much lower. Later this year, we'll provide three million seedlings of the Piptanthus concolor variety. It's an evergreen species native to Xizang that doesn't shed its leaves in winter," she said.

Ecological protection on the plateau is no easy feat, Yangdron noted.

"The environment in Xizang is quite fragile and the climate is unique. From collecting the seeds to cultivating the seedlings, the process is highly complex and demanding, and takes a long time. While everyone talks about protecting the plateau environment, I believe Xizang Autonomous Region has stressed adapting measures to the local conditions and respecting nature. What we need to do is work even harder to put these principles into practice and safeguard the environment on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau," Yangdron said.

Since the afforestation project took root, Yangdron said, the local climate has grown noticeably more humid, and the air feels richer in oxygen. The barren hills of the past are now draped in green, and in winter, the landscape is dotted with reds and yellows. What started as a mission to green the mountains, she added, has become a quest to make them beautiful.

Locals foster indigenous species for ecological restoration in Xizang