Shanghai launches 1st training base for robots

China has unveiled its first training ground for heterogeneous humanoid robots in Shanghai's Pudong New Area, a milestone for the humanoid robot industry.

The facility, which can accommodate more than 100 humanoid robots of various sizes and functions at the same time, is part of the metropolis' efforts to tap the sector, of which the scale is expected to reach 75 billion yuan ($10.31 billion) by 2029, industry sources have said.

"This is an important milestone for humanoid robot development in Shanghai and the whole country," said Zhang Hongtao, deputy director of the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Informatization, during the unveiling ceremony on Tuesday.

"Humanoid robots and embodied intelligence technology are on the verge of a big boom thanks to the continuous innovation and breakthroughs achieved in the fields of algorithm optimization, hardware upgrades and data collection, which have laid a solid foundation for the humanoid robot industry's upgrading and wide application," Zhang said.

Formerly known as Humanoid Robot Kylin Training Ground, the facility is the first of many more future training grounds to be unveiled across the nation. They are tasked with creating a platform of accurate, high-efficiency and low-cost data collection, meeting the various training requirements of the special robots, so as to promote technological breakthroughs and application of humanoid robots, according to Zhang.

"Without building redundant similar projects, the training ground will effectively reduce investment costs of developing humanoid intelligence technology," said Xu Bin, general manager of Humanoid Robot (Shanghai) Co Ltd, which is under the National and Local Co-Built Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center.

"As the training ground's operation matures, it will be expanded nationwide. These training grounds are expected to develop into a national-level platform of embodied intelligent technology, promote the new quality productive forces of China's humanoid robot industry, and provide a strong impetus for cultivating national strategic emerging industries and future industries," added Xu.

Taking up an area of 4,600 square meters, the training ground currently holds more than 100 humanoid robots receiving on-the-spot training under 10 scenarios, said Xing Boyang, R&D director with the National and Local Co-Built Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center.

Licensed in Shanghai in May 2024, the center is the country's first public platform for humanoid robot innovation and is currently one of the two national-level humanoid robot innovation centers in China.

"We are going to duplicate the Shanghai model to many different places to extend numerous training grounds and a lot more scenarios, eventually creating a Chinese humanoid robot training system," Xu said.

Xu forecasts that by 2027, at least 1,000 humanoid robots will be applied in State-level training grounds.

"The humanoid robot industry is too big to let a single platform or enterprise create the industrial ecology alone. This is extremely meaningful for us to offer the training ground to solve various challenges in its application and development," said Xu.

China's humanoid robot market is experiencing rapid growth as the industrial output value reached 2.76 billion yuan in 2024, is projected to reach 5.3 billion yuan in 2025 and further snowball to 75 billion yuan in 2029, according to Jiang Lei, chief scientist at the National and Local Co-Built Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center.

Regarded as a key technology to solve the aging problem, humanoid robots will be integrated with other technologies including embodied intelligence and autonomous driving to form a new scientific research paradigm, Jiang said.

Having nurtured the nation's first batch of industrial robots in the 1980s, Shanghai unveiled a plan in 2023 to promote its robot industry, including having 10 industrial leading robot brands, realizing 100 robot application scenarios, and expanding the city's robot industrial scale to 100 billion yuan by the end of 2025, according to the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Informatization.