WUHAN — Riding the wave of China's flourishing "experience economy", visitors to Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei province, are enjoying a host of new interactive experiences while playing with humanoid robots.
At the Hubei Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, pupils from a primary school are playing the classic children's game "Red Light, Green Light", their laughter ringing through the room.
Unlike previous generations, their playmate isn't another child, but a robot. After the robot issues a command, the children race forward; when the robot's arm stops moving, they instantly "freeze" in place.
Notably, their playground is also special. The Hubei center is a place dedicated to "cultivating and training new robots".
Here, visitors can do more than just observe the practical uses of humanoid robots. They can also play games with them and experience firsthand how data are collected and actions are trained.
Launched in June 2025, the Hubei Humanoid Robot Innovation Center is now one of China's largest robot innovation centers in terms of area and application scenarios.
It is based in the East Lake High-tech Development Zone, also known as the Optics Valley of China, where visitors can gain deeper insights into the city's rapidly growing high-tech cluster thanks to its increasingly popular tech-driven tourism.
The center has four sections dedicated to robot action training, data collection, application practice, and talent cultivation, respectively.
It is designed to facilitate the full chain of robot innovation from technology cultivation to industrial implementation, with four major functions: proof of concept, pilot testing services, data integration, and scenario validation.
To train the humanoid robots, the center immerses them in real-world application scenarios. For instance, the data collection section provides simulated home scenes that one might find in a kitchen, bathroom, and living room, as well as a milk tea shop, pharmacy, restaurant, warehouse, and others.
In another experience zone, there are no physical humanoid robots. Instead, trainers wear VR headsets to conduct remote control training for the robots.
Here, visitors can experience how robots are trained with VR equipment. For instance, while they are reaching out to gently pick a rose and place it into a vase, a blue "virtual hand" appears before their eyes, synchronously following the human hand's movements to perform the same action. This customized VR equipment can capture the trajectory of hand motion in real time, allowing the system to continuously enhance its intelligent interaction capabilities via simulated learning.
"Now, the robots are still in their learning phase. Through remote control by human operators, they can learn the hand movements people use in doing housework. Once sufficient data are collected, there is the prospect of them entering and serving households in the future," says Hu Longdan, a staff member at the center.
Just a 20-minute drive from the humanoid robot center, a modern smart factory welcomes visitors. Here, tourists can "encounter" robots hard at work on the factory floor.
In this factory for Xiaomi smart home appliances, an air conditioner rolls off the production line every 6.5 seconds. Seven unmanned transport lines connect the factory floor, enabling efficient goods logistics.
As the tourist shuttle enters the injection-molding plant, visitors see the production line operating with disciplined rhythm and efficient precision. They can watch how a smart factory works with full automation: robots are transferring goods to unmanned vehicles, which then take the cargo along dedicated tracks to a 24-meter-high automated warehouse.
Now, this smart factory has become a popular tourist destination, with increasing numbers of visitors flooding in to experience and explore the facility. In May, the factory received a record number of 3,485 visitors, a 31 percent month-on-month increase.
Amid the nationwide wave of tech innovation and the experience economy, the Optics Valley of China has launched tech tourism-themed routes, enabling visitors to experience, interact with, and gain insights into hardcore technology, which used to be hidden away in labs and plants.
Data show that, from March to June, tech-experience tourism sites in the Optics Valley of China have received around 480,000 visitors, with estimated revenue exceeding 11 million yuan ($1.6 million).
