Humanoid robots took center stage at 2026 Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum as industry leaders predicted major breakthroughs in the near future.
The three-day forum, which opened on Tuesday at the Yabuli Ski Resort in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, brought together business leaders, scholars, and experts from various industries this year, with artificial intelligence and robotics emerging as the hottest topics throughout the event.
It comes ahead of the 2026 Humanoid Half Marathon, scheduled for April 19 in Beijing, in which some models are expected to run with more navigational autonomy compared to last year's inaugural race. At Yabuli, Wang Xingxing, Founder and CEO of Unitree Robotics, said that these robots are close to being able to outrun human athletes.
"I predict that within a few months, by the middle of this year, humanoid robots globally—especially those in China—will be able to run faster than humans, with a 100-meter sprint speed potentially reaching under 10 seconds," said Wang, speaking on stage at the event.
He also emphasized general dexterity, urging attendees to focus on the biggest obstacles that robots currently face in meeting more diverse work requirements.
"Currently, if we pre-train a robot for one or several specific scenarios, its success rate can reach nearly 100 percent. However, if the scenario changes, its success rate drops very, very significantly. Therefore, we must improve the generalization ability of humanoid robots or embodied intelligence," he said.
As artificial intelligence technology rapidly advances, the pace of embodied intelligence moving toward commercial application is also accelerating.
"I am particularly optimistic about the future of robotics. The drivers are robots; there are also industrial robots and social robots. But ultimately, it will be humanoid robots—household humanoid robots. The entire market represents a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity," said Zhang Yaqin, dean of the Institute for AI Industry Research at Tsinghua University.
Industry leaders predict rapid breakthroughs in humanoid robotics
Industry leaders predict rapid breakthroughs in humanoid robotics
