By Eduardo Baptista and Laurie Chen
BEIJING, Aug 18 (Reuters) - China's humanoid robot makers have spent the past two years dazzling investors with machines that can breakdance, throw punches and even set marathon records. This week in Beijing, they face a tougher test in proving their inventions can work reliably to generate economic value.
More than 300 companies are expected at the World Robot Conference from Wednesday through Sunday, showcasing over 2,000 exhibits and launching more than 150 products,
according to Beijing authorities.
The conference coincides with the Shanghai stock market debut of Unitree, one of the world's largest humanoid robot makers by sales volume, after an initial public offering that was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors.
Unitree founder Wang Xingxing will address the conference's main forum on Thursday on the next decade of the humanoid industry, according to the Beijing municipal government.
The event comes as investor enthusiasm around Chinese humanoids reaches new heights, but the conversation is shifting from viral demonstrations to commercial reality. Investors and customers are increasingly judging robots not by how spectacularly they move, but by how productively they work, how much human supervision they require and whether they can earn a return on their cost.
Although robots in China are starting to replace human workers in niche applications such as hotel food deliveries and on some assembly lines, large-scale adoption across industries beyond limited pilot projects has yet to occur.
FROM DEMOS TO DEPLOYMENT
Some in the industry argue that reckoning is overdue. Lumos Robotics, a Mitsubishi Electric-backed startup exhibiting at WRC, has focused its MOS robot on industrial inspection and material handling rather than household or entertainment applications.
CEO Yu Chao told Reuters the companies most at risk in China's crowded embodied-AI sector were those developing robot bodies, models or data in isolation without proving their technology in actual applications.
For Yu, the eventual shakeout will come down to a simple question: can a robot create value for a customer? Companies that cannot, he said, "will be washed out."
Georg Stieler, a robotics analyst who advises industrial companies in China, estimates that 50% to 70% of humanoid robots produced this year could end up in "data factories", where they are used to collect training data rather than perform productive work for paying customers.
Guotai Securities, a Chinese brokerage, estimates an industrial humanoid would need to cost about 160,000 yuan, including maintenance, to pay for itself within two years compared with a worker earning 80,000 yuan annually.
In reality, such robots typically cost 300,000 to 500,000 yuan, according to Berlin-based think tank MERICS.
ROBOT GAMES TEST WORK ABILITY
Some of the industry's claims will face a more public test from Saturday.
The World Humanoid Robot Games, running from August 22 to 26 at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, will combine headline-grabbing races, football and fighting with a growing number of competitions designed around actual work.
Official plans include factory, hotel and household scenarios, with organisers requiring robots in some events to perform longer, continuous tasks in complex environments.
The competition schedule reviewed by Reuters includes packing and warehousing, industrial assembly and material feeding, retail and office services, electric-vehicle charging and dexterous tasks such as connecting cables and using tools.
Unlike a sprint or dance routine, such tasks test whether robots can identify unfamiliar objects, manipulate them repeatedly, recover from mistakes and complete jobs without engineers stepping in.
A GLOBAL PROBLEM
The challenge of turning impressive demonstrations into economically viable products is not confined to China.
In the United States, Jerry Wang, CEO of AIxCrypto Holdings, recently launched RoboShare, a marketplace designed to let businesses rent robots by the task rather than buy them outright.
Wang said one of the biggest bottlenecks today is not the robots themselves but the surrounding ecosystem. Skilled operators remain scarce, while transportation, deployment and maintenance costs can make robotic labour uneconomic.
Geopolitics is adding another layer of uncertainty. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission in July restricted new equipment authorisations for foreign-made advanced robotic devices, affecting companies including Unitree, though previously authorised models can still be sold.
Technology research firm IDC estimates China accounts for 82% of global humanoid shipments. Under its worst-case scenario for the U.S. restrictions, U.S. humanoid sales would be 58% below its prior baseline forecast by 2030.
(Reporting by Eduardo BaptistaEditing by Shri Navaratnam)
