China scales up embodied AI's reach

Physical-world AI is also fundamentally harder than language AI, Xi said, because robots must understand not just logical relationships, but space, time and interaction.

Microduck offers a miniature example of how that ecosystem works. It weighs less than 800 grams but packs 15 motors, a camera, miniature lidar, two inertial measurement units, microphones and a movable beak. Its software allows developers to train behaviors in simulation before transferring them to the physical machine.

It is a remarkable amount of robotics for $399. China's advantage, however, goes beyond low-cost components. It increasingly lies in engineering density — the ability to redesign a motor, source another sensor, modify a circuit board and put a revised machine back into production quickly.

And some Chinese companies are beginning to test whether that manufacturing strength can translate into something more important: robots doing economically useful work.

At a tablet factory operated by electronics manufacturer Longcheer Technology in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, eight robots from Shanghai-based Agibot spent six days in June operating around the clock alongside an existing mass-production line.

The company's G2 robots loaded and unloaded tablets, transferred devices between testing stations and sorted products after inspection. Agibot said positioning accuracy was controlled within one millimeter and the machines were able to distinguish qualified from defective products during the trial.

The deployment offers a glimpse of how China hopes to turn factories into both markets and laboratories for embodied AI.

Agibot said its 15,000th robot rolled off its production line in June, after the company took roughly a year to move from its first 1,000 units to 5,000, and only three months to double that to 10,000.

Yao Maoqing, Agibot's senior vice-president, has called 2026 and 2027 critical years for large-scale robot deployment in factories, saying the company plans to expand into consumer electronics, semiconductor packaging and testing, automobiles, logistics and warehousing.

Another Chinese robot maker, Galbot, is targeting heavier work. Its Galbot S1 has entered production lines at battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology, or CATL, performing material handling and picking in battery-module and battery-pack production.

The machine can carry a combined load of 50 kilograms with its two arms and operate for up to eight hours, according to CATL. The companies are also working together on global deployment and after-sales standards for humanoid robots.

For CATL, the world's largest electric-vehicle battery maker, the experiment represents an unusual convergence: a company that helped build China's EV supply chain is now providing both the workplace and the batteries for the next generation of robotic workers.