"China is moving quickly to try to dominate the industry. Humanoid-robotics companies are sprouting up from Shenzhen to Suzhou, with more than 140 and counting. Tapping a vast ecosystem of parts suppliers and engineering talent, they are starting to produce humanoid robots at scale and actively introducing them into real-life scenarios in factories, hotels and offices.
Setting the broader industry direction is Beijing, which has identified “embodied AI”—the fusion of artificial intelligence with physical systems—as a cutting-edge technology area China wants to own in the coming five years.
Local governments are showering companies with land and discounted office rent. Banks are offering favorable loan terms.
Since late 2024, Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities have established investment funds totaling more than $26 billion to inject capital into the industry, Morgan Stanley calculates.
Government agencies and state-owned companies are also serving as early adopters, buying up humanoids and deploying them in museums, at events and on the street as robocops performing traffic control. The deployments are helping firms to build a market and collect data to make the robots work better.
Some local governments are offering subsidies to buyers, paying around 10% of the price of humanoid robots to lower the bar for customers to try them.
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With humanoid robots, “China is once again mobilizing state support, supply-chain depth, and rapid commercialization to build a new strategic sector,” said Sunny Cheung, a fellow for China studies at the Jamestown Foundation. Success will depend on who can best solve the myriad technical problems associated with humanoid robots, he said.
The industry is still in its early days, and it may take years to take off—if it ever does. Skeptics say humanoid robots are a bubble, and may never find a true use case."
https://www.wsj.com/tech/china-is-going-all-in-to-beat-the-u-s-on-humanoid-robots-b9c434d2
#China #Robots #Robotics #EmbodiedAI #HumanoidRobots
