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Experts say the humanoid robots that have been released struggle with unpredictable situations. They can be programmed to follow patterns, but they have a hard time reacting to events as they happen.
Chinese companies are realising that making robots is not enough, said P.K. Tseng, a research manager at TrendForce, a market research firm in Taipei, Taiwan. “Without use cases, even if they can ship the products, they don’t know where to sell them,” he said.
Company founders and investors believe that artificial intelligence will be the answer and that humanoid robots could be how AI becomes a physical force in the world.
In Silicon Valley, tech executives often talk about achieving what they call artificial general intelligence. There is no settled definition, but for many it is the idea that AI could match the powers of the human mind.
In China, robotics companies claim they will make AGI a reality.
“For people in China, AGI should be something that benefits people in their everyday life,” said Sunny Cheung, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, which studies Chinese government influence. “Robotics is a testament of applied AI in real life.”
But there is a big gap between this vision and the current abilities of robots. Many Chinese robotics startups are working on software they hope will transform robot behaviour the way large language models have transformed AI.
One way that robots can learn to act more like people is by repetitively doing basic tasks. For example, a limited number of robots made by UBTech Robotics, which is based in Shenzhen like dozens of other startups, have been lifting boxes over and over again at electric vehicle factories.
China has already put 2 million manufacturing robots to use.Credit: AP
Another way to train robots is by simulation, in which they watch a lot of videos of the thing they will do. Many of China’s leading robotics startups use software and chips made by the Silicon Valley company Nvidia to run their robots’ simulation training, Cheung said.
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While no one is certain how useful humanoid robots will turn out to be, China has already put 2 million manufacturing robots to use. Factories in China installed nearly 300,000 new robots last year, while US factories installed 34,000.
Chinese factories have also gotten better at making robots, a major advantage over foreign firms that struggle to manufacture them in large numbers.
The startup Unitree Robotics has announced plans to do an initial public offering, which could provide the capital it needs to help it become China’s leading humanoid robotics maker. Its latest basic humanoid robots are priced at about $US6000 ($9000) in China, a fraction of the price of robots made by Boston Dynamics, long the leading American player in the industry. Boston Dynamics was acquired by the South Korean giant Hyundai Motor Co. in 2020.
Major AI research labs, universities and startups in the United States have bought Unitree robots in recent months to test the robots’ abilities and interactions with their software.
Chinese robot makers can offer lower prices in part because they are getting a lot of funding from municipal governments and state-backed hedge funds. The Beijing government has started a $14 billion fund to invest in AI and robotics. Shanghai set up an embodied AI fund with an initial investment of about $77 million.
In Hangzhou, a tech hot spot, Unitree and a rival, Deep Robotics, are part of a group of AI and robotics startups that the Chinese media has crowned the “six dragons.” The AI startup DeepSeek is another.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
