{"id":849270,"date":"2026-08-09T16:08:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T16:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/849270\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T16:08:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T16:08:29","slug":"home-robots-china-looks-to-dominate-home-robot-market-in-tech-revolution-after-wins-on-evs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/849270\/","title":{"rendered":"Home robots: China looks to dominate home robot market in tech revolution after wins on EVs"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the fifth floor of an office building in the outer suburbs of Shenzhen, a high-tech megacity on China\u2019s southern coast, humanoid robots are being put through their paces.<\/p>\n

Some are strung up in harnesses for testing; others stand silently, waiting to be assigned repetitive tasks such as lifting boxes or stacking shelves.<\/p>\n

This is the headquarters of robotics data start-up IO-AI Tech, which has converted its open-plan office into a humanoid training ground run by a team of mostly Gen Z engineers, decked out in casual T-shirts, pants and sneakers.<\/p>\n

In one corner, a robot is doing the laundry. Kind of.<\/p>\n

With slow, jerky movements, its mechanical hands reach out and grasp a shirt, removing it from a clothes hanger before trudging towards a top-loading washing machine and dropping it in. The whole process takes about 40 seconds, even longer if the robot tries to close the machine \u2013 its hands still significantly lack the dexterity of a human\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Trailing a few steps behind is an IO-AI employee wearing a VR headset and a full-body teleoperation suit that wirelessly controls the robot, enabling it to mirror his moves in real time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe use a bunch of data, human movement data, to train the robot,\u201d the company\u2019s chief executive, Xiangyu Chen, explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cGradually we think the robot can do some types of autonomous tasks. But [being] 100 per cent autonomous is, we think, not possible for now, or even for the next five to 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that fully autonomous future comes with a moral conundrum that Chen is frank about.<\/p>\n

\"AnAn IO-AI Tech staff member trains a humanoid robot to do laundry at the company\u2019s headquarters in Shenzhen.\"AA robot is trained to carry a box.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that robots are made to help people, not to substitute them; otherwise, people won\u2019t have any work and the economy crashes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Aged in their 30s, Chen and his Australian co-founder, Si Chen (no relation), met while working at the Robotics X Lab run by Tencent \u2013 one of China\u2019s biggest tech behemoths, also headquartered in Shenzhen.<\/p>\n

Their company doesn\u2019t build robots. Instead, it\u2019s part of the emerging data collection industry booming alongside it. IO-AI Tech\u2019s customers send it robots they have bought to be trained in controlled, task-specific scenarios, or use the company\u2019s teleoperation technology to train the robots themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest challenge for robotics is that we don\u2019t have millions of robots out there in the real world that are producing robot data. You need to organically create the data that the robot needs to learn from,\u201d Si Chen says from her base in Sydney.<\/p>\n

China v US robot race\"RobotsRobots fight during a kickboxing match at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing in 2025.Getty<\/p>\n

IO-AI Tech is one of thousands of start-ups to emerge in China\u2019s robotics ecosystem in the past few years \u2013 many in Shenzhen \u2013 powered by the breakneck speed of developments in artificial intelligence models since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in late 2022.<\/p>\n

Though still nascent and its utility uncertain, the humanoids field is quickly becoming a key battleground in China\u2019s geopolitical contest with the United States, as policymakers in Washington grow alarmed at Beijing\u2019s stranglehold on 85 per cent of the market.<\/p>\n

Last month, the Trump administration, citing national security concerns, banned the import of new foreign-made humanoids and power inverters \u2013 hobbling Chinese manufacturers\u2019 access to their largest export market. Beijing hit back this week, tightening controls on drone exports to the US.<\/p>\n

The US move also signals it is hedging its bets that humanoid robots won\u2019t be limited to PR stunts of dancing, kick-boxing or marathon running<\/a> for long, and wants to protect its fledgling robotics industry from Chinese imports.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is almost a kind of urgency to the way that Chinese policymakers are going about the humanoid push, and I think implicit in the background there is the knowledge that the US is also trying to do this, especially Elon Musk with the Tesla Optimus robots,\u201d says Kyle Chan, an expert in China\u2019s tech policy at the Brookings Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this technology does end up becoming strategically very important, both for productivity and potentially for military applications, then China doesn\u2019t want to be left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just don\u2019t expect to be putting a robot to work in your home doing the dishes or the laundry any time soon.<\/p>\n

Experts are frank that humanoids are a long way from being deployed autonomously to perform complex real-world jobs. Exactly how much data is needed before they can be unleashed unsupervised is still being figured out by scientists. But it\u2019s gargantuan.<\/p>\n

Xiangyu Chen, who holds a PhD in robotics, draws a comparison with Tesla, which has collected billions of kilometres of driving data to refine its self-driving systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor now, the robots only have millions of [hours of] data. It would have to be scaled more than 1000 times,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s big gamble on humanoids<\/p>\n

China already operates more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined, though many are large-scale fixed machines on factory assembly lines and imported from Japan and Europe.<\/p>\n

\"IO-AIIO-AI Tech founder Xiangyu Chen with the company\u2019s exoskeleton glove that can be used to control humanoid hands. <\/p>\n

The Chinese government is making a huge bet that \u201cembodied artificial intelligence\u201d and automation will shape the future, revolutionising everything from manufacturing to healthcare, aged care, military systems and education.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s banking that the current capability gaps in humanoids can be closed through huge investments in science and research, and by fostering fierce competition among start-ups.<\/p>\n

Put simply, embodied or \u201cphysical\u201d AI systems combine a software-powered \u201cbrain\u201d with a hardware \u201cbody\u201d \u2013 such as humanoids, quadruped \u201cdogs\u201d, drones or self-driving vehicles \u2013 so the robots can interact and adapt to real-world situations.<\/p>\n

Chinese President Xi Jinping has put AI and robotics at the centre of the nation\u2019s industrial policy, which champions them as \u201cnew productive forces\u201d that will revive stagnating growth, create new jobs and fill workplace shortages caused by an ageing population, even as competing concerns emerge around job erasure.<\/p>\n

Last year, China set up a 100 billion yuan ($21 billion) fund to back homegrown high-tech start-ups over the next two decades, with embodied AI companies a key target.<\/p>\n

\u201cWaste is a feature, not a bug,\u201d says Rebecca Arcesati from Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), Europe\u2019s leading China-focused think tank. \u201cA lot of Chinese AI policy has been trying to throw things at the wall and then seeing what sticks.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the signal coming from the top, local governments in China have poured support and subsidies into hubs in Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai or Hangzhou, eager for their own tech capitals to claim the latest breakthrough.<\/p>\n

The start-ups this masthead spoke to had received at least some form of government support, such as free or subsidised office rent, while also seeking private funding. IO-AI Tech, which has about 80 employees, said it was venture-capital funded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis industry would not exist in China were it not for the heavy targeting of the Chinese national government,\u201d Chan says.<\/p>\n

Chinese start-ups are far from the only players in this space, but they have scaled up and got to market faster and for less than their rivals. The big three manufacturers \u2013 Unitree, UBTech, and AgiBot \u2013 accounted for more than half of all global humanoid installations in 2025, according to market research firm Counterpoint.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Unitree\u2019s entry-level humanoid can be purchased for $US5000 ($7140), a benchmark that its US rivals Boston Dynamics and Musk\u2019s Optimus (the \u201cTesla bot\u201d) won\u2019t come close to matching when their products hit the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobotics is where EVs were a decade ago \u2013 a trillion yuan ($210 billion) battlefield,\u201d Unitree founder Wang Xingxing said last year.<\/p>\n

Musk, meanwhile, has assessed China\u2019s robotics breakout this way.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is an ass-kicker, next level,\u201d he said in January. \u201cTo the best of our knowledge, we don\u2019t see any significant [humanoid robot] competitors outside of China.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, China\u2019s robotics industry is still heavily reliant on US technology, including Nvidia software, as well as precision components from Japan and Germany. But experts say it is rapidly closing the gap and increasingly becoming self-reliant.<\/p>\n

Beware the AI bubble <\/p>\n

At exoskeleton company Jimpoer\u2019s rent-free headquarters in western Shenzhen, executive Pan Dinglong says it took less than a year for his team to get its product from a design concept to being sold on Chinese electronics platform JD.com.<\/p>\n

\"ChineseChinese food delivery giant Meituan uses drones to deliver food to designated stations in Shenzhen. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn Shenzhen, this is normal. Indeed, we feel that it is a bit slow because the competition is becoming more and more fierce,\u201d Pan says.<\/p>\n

The exoskeleton is essentially a wearable robot that a user straps to their legs, propelling them forward and making certain exercises, such as climbing stairs, easier. After one year, the company is breaking even, Pan says, and has sold more than 4000 units, mostly for elderly people in China.<\/p>\n

This concept of \u201cShenzhen speed\u201d \u2013 the ability of start-ups to develop an idea and scale it to mass production at a pace unmatched outside China \u2013 is what has cemented the city as an incubator of innovation.<\/p>\n

Key to this is Shenzhen\u2019s deep networks of hardware supply chains, which helped transform it from a fishing village in the 1980s to the home of tech giants Tencent and Huawei, drone company DJI, and electric vehicle juggernaut BYD.<\/p>\n

\u2018Robotics is where EVs were a decade ago \u2013 a trillion yuan ($210 billion) battlefield.\u2019<\/p>\n

Unitree founder Wang Xingxing<\/p>\n

Almost every conceivable off-the-shelf bolt, screw, sensor, motor and circuit board can be sourced from suppliers within a two-hour drive of Shenzhen for a fraction of the price in Western markets. The city also has rich pools of computer scientists, software developers, designers and engineers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have customers in the US who are looking to partner with us because they don\u2019t have access to the hardware. Their hardware development and prototyping plans are often in months or quarters. We\u2019re operating in days and weeks,\u201d IO-AI Tech\u2019s Si Chen says.<\/p>\n

But China\u2019s robotics industry is already showing signs of the oversaturation now plaguing the EV industry after its subsidy-powered boom to global dominance. <\/a><\/p>\n

Too many companies are competing in the same space, producing similar products, and without a clear path to profitability.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Exercise<\/a><\/p>\n

Some 400 Chinese EV brands have collapsed or merged since 2019, and only a dozen or so of the remaining 100 are expected to be profitable by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n

Currently, around 150 Chinese companies are making humanoid robots, and thousands of other start-ups have flocked into the adjacent robotics field.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can survive in this highly competitive environment, you do have an advantage when you take your products to the rest of the world,\u201d Si Chen says.<\/p>\n

No escape from automation<\/p>\n

Then there are other start-ups, such as BlueX Robotics, that have partnered with research institutes and are state-sponsored creations.<\/p>\n

BlueX has developed what it calls the world\u2019s first blueberry-picking robot. It claims to have a top picking speed of 3 seconds, although its mechanical claw can pick only one berry at a time. Unlike humans, it can work around the clock and doesn\u2019t require sick days and bathroom breaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur vision is to realise unmanned farming production \u2013 we want to build dark factories for agriculture,\u201d founder Chen Zhijun, 49, says.<\/p>\n

\"BlueXBlueX Robotics founder Chen Zhijun (right) demonstrates his company\u2019s blueberry picking machine at the start-up\u2019s office in Shenzhen.<\/p>\n

He says the company expects to have 500 robots deployed in blueberry farms by the end of the year, helping China\u2019s farmers reduce costs but probably eliminating harvesting jobs in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to solve the difficulties they face in farming, reduce their input costs and increase their incomes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they can afford to hire workers, they can afford to buy robots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chen says agricultural robots are the company\u2019s focus, but it also makes security \u201cdogs\u201d, which have been purchased by Chinese government authorities. BlueX Robotics has a partnership with the Harbin Institute of Technology, one of China\u2019s top defence universities, which is blacklisted by the US government for research co-operation.<\/p>\n

Being pioneers of the automation revolution puts China\u2019s leaders at the forefront of concerns about AI\u2019s impact on employment, particularly if it fails to deliver the \u201cjobs of the future\u201d necessary to absorb millions of STEM graduates each year while youth unemployment hovers around 17 per cent.<\/p>\n

There are signs these anxieties are being acknowledged. In April, a Chinese court ruled a tech company had illegally sacked a worker after replacing him with AI software, with the decision promoted by state media. <\/p>\n

The country\u2019s ageing population means automation in certain industries will be essential. At the same time, China\u2019s 300 million migrant workers are heavily reliant on the type of factory, farm and gig-economy work vulnerable to automation and have little safety net to fall back on.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a delicate balance that could challenge the Communist Party\u2019s social contract, which hinges on trading freedoms in exchange for economic progress, says Arcesati from MERICS.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people started really expressing discontent with this strategy of AI diffusion and adoption, which Xi Jinping has been pushing consistently over the past few years, what is the government going to do?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be one of the main things to watch in China over the next few years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what\u2019s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the fifth floor of an office building in the outer suburbs of Shenzhen, a high-tech megacity on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-849270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}