Why can China host two world-class robotics events a week?
2026-08-25
How popular is embodied intelligence? Recently, the two world-class robotics events held in Beijing are the most indicative of everything.
On August 19th, the 2026 World Robot Conference opened in Beijing, with more than 300 participating companies, a year-on-year increase of 36%, over 2000 exhibits, a year-on-year increase of 27%, and over 150 new products launched, a year-on-year increase of 21%; On August 22nd, the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games opened at the National Speed Skating Oval "Ice Ribbon", with 666 teams from 16 countries and a total of 2056 robots competing on the same stage.
The 'Brain Age' of Robots Has Arrived
From the two conferences, the trend keyword for embodied intelligence in 2026 is already very clear - "robot brain". If in previous years, the competition in the robotics industry was still focused on the stacking of hardware indicators such as motors, reducers, and joint degrees of freedom, then this year's two major events have clearly declared to the entire industry that the competition in robotics is accelerating from the "torso era" to the "brain era".
In the bustling crowds and technical exercises of the two robotics conferences, we not only saw the miracle of mechanical manufacturing, but also a new landscape of AI models landing in the physical world.
This turn is not untraceable. Not long ago, Wang Xingxing, the founder of Yushu Technology, emphasized the importance of the "robot brain" on multiple occasions. After experiencing rapid iteration of hardware architecture between quadruped robots and humanoid robots, industry leaders have increasingly realized that relying solely on mechanical engineering optimization cannot enable robots to break through the bottleneck of performance props or specialized equipment for specific scenarios. The key to whether robots can truly enter various industries and households lies in whether they have a "brain" that can understand the complex physical world, possess generalized perception and autonomous decision-making abilities.
This industry judgment from top tier companies has been fully confirmed in the recent two robotics events.
Combining large models with robot software and hardware to reconstruct industrial logic
At the two conferences, 'Embodied AI' is rapidly evolving from a cutting-edge academic term to tangible business and technological achievements. The evolution of embodied intelligence is completely reshaping the value coordinates of the robotics industry, from the on-site display of robotic arms autonomously sorting garbage of different materials based on fuzzy instructions, to humanoid robots autonomously planning multi-step actions to retrieve items after understanding human natural language instructions.
Once considered independent fields, large model software focused on virtual digital worlds and robot hardware focused on physical and mechanical movements are merging at an unprecedented depth.
Commercially, the combination of large models and robot software and hardware is addressing the pain point of "poor generalization ability" that has long plagued the industrialization of robots. Traditional industrial robots and service robots often require high cost customized development and on-site debugging for specific scenarios. Once there are slight changes in the working environment or task requirements, the system cannot cope. The high deployment and maintenance costs have always been a key factor restricting the penetration rate of the robot market. The powerful reasoning ability and cross scenario generalization ability possessed by large models precisely equip robots with a "universal brain" that can continuously evolve and adapt to new environments. Future robots may be able to quickly adapt to various complex application scenarios such as manufacturing, logistics, elderly care, and home care through a unified "brain" architecture, greatly shortening the commercialization landing cycle and reducing the threshold for large-scale applications.
This paradigm shift of "soft with hard, soft with hard collaboration" is also reshaping the industrial chain ecology and capital layout of robots. Previous evaluations of robots by capital have mostly focused on supply chain cost control and hardware assembly capabilities; Nowadays, enterprises with high-level end-to-end large-scale model development capabilities, massive high-quality physical world interaction data, and the ability to achieve deep closed-loop optimization of software and hardware are gaining favor in the capital market.
Hardware is gradually moving towards standardization and modularization, becoming the "infrastructure" that carries intelligent algorithms; The software and algorithm brains that endow hardware with soul are no longer limited to text generation or image rendering on the screen, but enter the real and complex reality space through embodied intelligence, becoming an important highland for future industrial competition. This has enabled many Internet giants, AI giants and new intelligent start-ups to form close technological and business alliances, and jointly promote the positive business cycle of "algorithm data hardware scenario".
How can China transition from manufacturing advantage to intelligent advantage?
The complexity and uncertainty of the physical world are both the ultimate touchstone for the evolution of AI and a new blue ocean for AI to unleash enormous economic value. In the global arena of robotics, China is in a unique position - both a leader and an all-around player.
The report released at the 2026 World Robot Conference shows that in the first half of 2026, the shipment of humanoid robots in China has exceeded 40000 units, and the global share has increased to 97%. China has built the world's most complete and resilient robot hardware industry chain, covering core components such as servo motors, reducers, controllers, and integrated manufacturing of complete machines, with a localization rate of over 90%.
China's biggest advantage lies not only in the quantity of shipments, but also in the speed of evolution of the robot "brain" under the joint efforts of hardware, scenarios, and policies.
97% of the global shipment of humanoid robots means that China has the world's largest real data on robot deployment. Every robot that screws in the factory, sorts packages in the warehouse, and retrieves medicine from the pharmacy is accumulating nutrients for the evolution of China's robot "brain". At the same time, China also has extremely rich industrial and consumer level application scenarios, becoming the richest soil for training the "brain" of Chinese robots. The 15th Five Year Plan for the first time lists embodied intelligence and humanoid robots as new economic growth points, and further endorses the development of the robotics industry with institutional strength, which will help expand China's intelligent advantages.
When hardware and scene advantages meet the rapidly iterating AI big model "brain", the industrial transformation force it inspires will surpass any previous period. The industrial rules of embodied intelligence are being rewritten in China.
Overall, the evolution of the "brain" of robots has just begun, but what it has opened up is undoubtedly a new era of industry and life driven by embodied intelligence. Hardware sets the bottom line, while the brain determines the upper limit. This is not only a consensus among industry leaders, but also a new business paradigm that the entire intelligent robot industry is practicing. (Outlook New Era)
(Author: Chen Bai, Expert Committee Member of "Law and Artificial Intelligence")
Edit:Luoyu Responsible editor:Wang Erdong
Source:china.com.cn
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