Chinese robotics firms race to roll out components and data systems, helping robots perceive, understand, and interact with the real world
Move helps robots to better understand and interact with the real world
A humanoid robot uses Hesai Group’s Kosmo spatial camera to scan a store in Shanghai on Wednesday. Photo: Li Xuanmin/Global Times
At the Humanoid Robot Data Training Center in Beijing’s western Shijingshan District, dozens of robots stood in their workrooms, learning how to pick up objects steadily and quickly. This is not a simple task – the robot must “see” the object, gauge its distance and angle, and control the force exerted by its fingers.
Motion-capture systems, which convert human movements into training data, are insufficient to help these robots mature. To perform reliably across different objects and environments, robots need more precise 3D spatial perception, more sensitive tactile feedback, more dexterous end effectors, and data tech capable of reconstructing and simulating the real world.
As China’s humanoid robots move from labs to factories and downstream competition now centers on their ability to perceive and interact with the real world, every grasp at the Shijingshan training facility highlights the pressing need for more advanced supporting technologies and hardware devices.
In this context, Chinese companies have been racing to roll out new products across upstream segments, from sensing hardware and dexterous hands to drive systems and data infrastructure, aiming to capitalize on this emerging opportunity while strengthening the homegrown embodied AI supply chain.
“China’s manufacturing of downstream humanoid robots is quite crowded, but there are still many business opportunities upstream, particularly in the perception layer, which centers on enhancing embodied AI’s perception and manipulation capabilities,” Liu Shaoshan, director of Embodied AI at the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society, told the Global Times.
Behind this shift lies not only growing demand for robot applications, but also a change in the logic of industrial competition. As robots become more agile, their capacity to accurately understand their environment, perceive objects, and accomplish tasks is becoming one of the key factors that determine their commercial value.
Visual perception is one of the core technologies for robots. In line with the trend, physical artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company Hesai Group on Wednesday launched Kosmo, a 3D world data engine. Kosmo combines Kosmo One, the world’s first AI spatial camera, with the Kosmo World cloud platform to transform physical environments into high-fidelity 3D digital spaces for robot training, model development, and immersive content creation.
Li Yifan, co-founder and CEO of Hesai, said that there has been surging demand for devices such as Kosmo amid the large-scale deployment of physical AI. The Kosmo devices were delivered to the first batch of customers in July, having secured orders from downstream companies including Galbot, and engaging about 200 partners.
Li noted that many humanoid robots have yet to demonstrate a path toward general-purpose use. “A robot that can dance does not necessarily have value, and some robots are still unable to complete real tasks. Others do not inherently represent an upgrade in automation, failing to go beyond traditional automation such as parcel-sorting robots or cooking robots,” Li told the Global Times.
Li stressed that the build-up of the infrastructure for physical AI has just begun, and to facilitate the process, two key issues need to be properly addressed: how machines can act upon the real world, and how AI can obtain high-quality, sufficient volumes of real-world data.
“Making a robot smarter involves a large amount of investment, whether in a large-language model, computing power, or training data. In the hardware part, it is about acting as the ‘eyes’ and ‘muscles,’ and enabling the humanoid robots to execute tasks more efficiently,” Li explained.
Hesai is not alone in Chinese suppliers’ moves to capitalize on these fast-growing market demands.
Orbbec, a high-tech firm based in Shenzhen and specializing in 3D visual sensing technology, has been rolling out more of its EGO data collection devices this year, the Global Times learned from the company. The heat-mounted device records the wearer’s perspective and movements, generating data for training large-language AI models used in robotics.
“Demands from robotics companies have become more diversified, and we have customized our technologies accordingly. For example, service robots operate in environments with strong lighting, complex textures and sudden crowds. Our company analyzed on-site data and adjusted algorithms to solve the problem of robot operation under extreme lighting conditions. For sweeping robots, we provide an infrared active fill-light solution so that they can identify tiny objects even at night,” Zhao Jiyu, the company’s marketing director, told the Global Times.
Industry insiders said that one of the reasons Chinese upstream device producers can respond swiftly to demands from the robotics supply chain lies in the rich experience they have accumulated in rounds of the technology wave, for example in the consumer electronics boom and autonomous driving.
“The core components of humanoid robots and autonomous driving overlap to a significant extent, enabling Chinese hardware suppliers to adapt to potential business demands more quickly while cutting the costs further,” Liu said. He also noted that downstream mass production of humanoid robots is “achievable” by building on automakers’ production lines.
Across the upstream, core component segments in China such as tactile sensors, dexterous hands and joint modules continued to attract more capital this year, industry insiders said.
“These developments are driven by demand from the downstream sector. As downstream applications become increasingly diverse, they are feeding back into the upstream, requiring better components to support them,” Liu said. He added that this is a very “unique” phenomenon in China as the country has the world’s most comprehensive supply chain, with relatively easy access to parts in a wide variety of forms, which provides favorable conditions for the rapid iteration of humanoid robots.
Analysts said that China’s robotics edge makes it probably the only country capable of meeting real-world demand across all layers of humanoid robots at competitive prices.
According to IDC data, global humanoid robot shipments approached 25,000 units in the first half of 2026, a year-on-year growth of 432.1 percent. China’s shipments accounted for about 77.9 percent of the global market.
According to Li, a single humanoid robot requires more than 100 actuation modules, which refers to joint actuation units that drive robots’ movement. Industry estimates suggest that when the global total of humanoid robots reaches 10 billion units, demand for actuation modules could reach 1 trillion sets.
Reference Link:- https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202610/1372460.shtml
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
