"Earlier this month, an engineer at electric vehicle maker Xpeng cut open the company's new humanoid robot to dispel social media rumors that the life-like creature wasn't a real person. "They told me that many people were saying there was a real person hidden inside," Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng said in a video posted to Weibo. "It is absolutely a real robot, right?" he said after the robot's "skin" and webbed "muscle" were slashed to reveal its inner machine."
"Yet China's strength in robotics goes beyond flashy spectacles. The country manufactures just over half the world's industrial robots and installed more of them in its own operations last year than the rest of the world combined. Its innovation is as grand as the Baidu, WeRide and Pony.Ai self-driving cars zipping around Beijing, Shenzhen, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Barcelona and as humble as the robotic vacuum cleaner."
"Take Roborock. Founded by a group of Xiaomi-backed engineers in 2014, the Beijing-based company has quickly surged to take over the home robot vacuum market once dominated by iRobot and Roomba. It's now the largest robot vacuum brand in the world. I recently talked to Roborock's president, Quan Gang, about how China has managed to move so quickly in this space. "In China, we have a very comprehensive supply chain," he explained, which helps make "design and production very easy, competent and efficient.""
China demonstrates broad strength in robotics, spanning humanoid spectacles and dominant industrial robot manufacturing. The country produces just over half of the world's industrial robots and installed more robots domestically last year than the rest of the world combined. Chinese firms combine comprehensive local supply chains with intense competition to accelerate product development and deployment. Roborock grew from Xiaomi-backed engineers to the world's largest robot vacuum brand by moving faster to market and leveraging supply-chain advantages. Chinese robotics innovations range from autonomous vehicles and humanoid demonstrations to everyday consumer robots like vacuum cleaners.
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