LIUZHOU/BEIJING – Inside a training center in southern China, more than 100 humanoid robots stand in neat rows. A dozen human trainers wearing headsets guide some of them through simple tasks — sorting crates, packaging noodles, making coffee. The humanoids are slow and awkward.
A novice trainer might get them to produce one usable movement in 300 attempts; an experienced trainer, one in 50. Robot maker UBTech won an $18 million tender from the Guangxi regional government last October to supply the training facility with humanoids and related hardware. The mission: to produce training data for so-called embodied AI — robots able to perceive, decide and act in the physical world.
The trainers use headsets to see from the robots’ perspective and handheld controllers fitted with sensors to translate their own movements into the robots’ actions. Teaching humanoids to handle labor-intensive work could one day meet an acute need. China’s population is aging and shrinking, eroding a critical demographic advantage for its industrial base: a vast pool of workers.
And China’s military researchers have explored the potential uses of robotics and artificial intelligence in future weapons systems. The Liuzhou center aims to sell robot-training data to factories. But three staffers acknowledged the subsidy-dependent project currently has no clear path to profitability, citing high operating costs and low prices for its data in the nascent market.
UBTech and the Guangxi and Liuzhou governments didn’t comment for this story. The facility captures a central tension in China’s humanoid push: Government funding and manufacturing investment are racing ahead of the robots’ ability to operate outside of choreographed demonstrations — like the kung fu routines, dances and boxing matches that have made the machines internet sensations. Though China’s robot makers produce world-beating hardware, the humanoids lack the intelligence needed for general-purpose work, limiting their practical uses, a half-dozen industry executives and researchers told .
Critically, they struggle with situations requiring intuition or deviation from programmed routines. It reveals a widening gap between government ambitions and robot capabilities — resulting in a market where manufacturing capacity outpaces commercial demand, key players rely on subsidies and prices are falling. The humanoid-robot industry shipped about 20,000 units globally last year, with Chinese manufacturers accounting for 95%, according to BofA Global Research.
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