China's homegrown humanoid robots were an interesting highlight at the just-concluded 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), showcasing evolving technologies spanning whole-body locomotion, underlying control, and data collection.
At the telecommunications, computer and information services exhibition area, one highlight is a humanoid robot rhythmically striking a set of ancient bronze bells. With carefully controlled force and steady timing, the machine demonstrates precisely tuned motion and control capabilities that have proved a crowd favorite at this year's fair.
The telecommunications, computer and information services exhibition area features more than 130 enterprises and institutions.
Among the debuts is a domestically developed robot electronic architecture platform. Designed as a unified base layer, the architecture meets functional and performance demands of everyday, industrial and medical scenarios alike, paving the way for more refined real-world deployment.
"This electronic architecture strengthens security functions and can effectively defend against cyberattacks or virus damage. By merging the robot's 'brain' and 'cerebellum' on a unified architecture and simplifying the network, it greatly reduces cost while delivering better performance and easier development," said Li Ping, a representative of the exhibitor.
The high cost of data collection and calibration has long been a bottleneck for the embodied AI sector. To address this, a Chinese company showcased its independently developed simulation training system, which closely replicates physical reality and allows robots to practice and learn from trial and error repeatedly in virtual environments, sharply cutting training costs for embodied AI firms.
To date, the company has made more than 100,000 hours of human behavior datasets open source to the global community, covering over 15,000 distinct scenarios.
"We hope this helps small and medium-sized enterprises and research institutes in China's embodied AI sector train models faster. We are also pushing data standardization, so that multiple teams can reuse one dataset," said Dong Xiaochao, another exhibitor representative.
The 2026 CIFTIS, which concluded in Beijing on Sunday, drew participants from 90 countries, regions, and international organizations, with over 1,800 companies exhibiting services and technologies on site.
The core exhibition area debuted a showcase of more than 140 innovation cases spanning all 12 categories of services trade, including artificial intelligence, large language models, and intelligent agents, offering a glimpse of where China's services sector is headed.
Humanoid robots demonstrate full-chain technological evolution at 2026 CIFTIS in Beijing
