○ NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang showcased a humanoid robot at the GTC conference, releasing a general-purpose open-source model for humanoid robots; a national-local collaborative humanoid robot innovation center has been established to create an embodied intelligence simulation platform and launch an open fund; Beijing will host the world’s first humanoid robot “half marathon” competition next month…○ In the past week, the topic of humanoid robots has remained hot. In Nanjing, the enthusiasm for technological innovation and industrial development of humanoid robots shows no signs of waning.○ The “dexterous hand” can twist screws and pinch tweezers, with flexibility comparable to Tesla’s humanoid robot; brain-computer interface technology decodes mysterious signals from the human brain, leading to the development of a non-invasive navigation surgical robot—this is the latest achievement from the “Zhongke System” startup in Nanjing’s Qilin Science and Technology Innovation Park, backed by the “national team”.○ Gathering intelligence to tackle electric servo and electro-hydraulic servo systems, Shenyuan Intelligent Technology has mass-produced six-dimensional force sensors, and Tianchuang Electronics has launched the world’s first explosion-proof humanoid robot. The domestic industrial robot leader, Estun, is about to release its second-generation humanoid robot—private enterprises in Nanjing are leading the charge to tackle one challenging problem after another.
○ “Embodied intelligence” and “intelligent robots” have been included in the government work report for the first time this year. Humanoid robots are the advanced form of intelligent robots and the best carriers of embodied intelligence, attracting global attention from technology and capital. The year 2025 is seen as the “year of mass production” for humanoid robots.
○ In this trillion-level new track, many regions in China are competing to enter the market. In Nanjing, from the “brain” to the “limbs” of humanoid robots, from upstream core component development to downstream application by complete machine manufacturers, there are challengers and leaders throughout the entire industrial chain.
01Those Who Master Dexterous Hands Will Conquer the World
○ Picking up an egg without squeezing too hard to break it or too lightly to drop it is an innate skill for humans, but it has been a significant challenge for robots.
○ In Nanjing’s Qilin Science and Technology Innovation Park, this challenge has already been easily overcome. Visitors to the Zhongke Silicon Era (Nanjing) Robotics Co., Ltd. often express amazement. The humanoid dexterous hand here can not only easily “grasp” an egg but also hold a wrench to twist screws, pick up pipettes and beakers for experiments, and even wield a fruit knife to cut dragon fruit.
○ “The human hand has 24 degrees of freedom, while this dexterous hand can achieve 25, capable of replicating over 90% of human-like dexterous operations, and the cost is far lower than similar products abroad,” said Zhang Tianyi, the company’s chairman and CEO. “For example, our humanoid dexterous hand product is fully aligned with foreign products, with many indicators at the international leading level, effectively breaking the foreign technology monopoly.”
○ “Those who master dexterous hands will conquer the world.” Dexterous hands belong to the intersection of cutting-edge technologies such as deep bionics, soft sensing, micro-electromechanical systems, and high-performance materials, with research and development costs accounting for about 20%-30% of humanoid robots, representing a critical bottleneck that intelligent robots urgently need to overcome. Without years of investment and deep technological accumulation, ordinary enterprises cannot achieve this. As early as ten years ago, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, representing the “national team,” began to lay the groundwork for research on dexterous hands.
○ Zhongke Silicon Era was registered in the park last year and is a result of the transformation of achievements incubated by the Zhongke Artificial Intelligence Innovation Research Institute. The startup’s ambition to scale technological “peaks” is supported by the “national team.” The foundational research results of dexterous hands come from Professor Wang Peng’s Casia Hand embodied intelligence robot team at the National Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The founding team has focused on breakthroughs in the dexterous operation capabilities of robotic “upper limbs” for over a decade, being among the first in the country to systematically conduct research on tendon-driven dexterous hands and “dexterous hands + embodied intelligence.” This achievement has received authoritative recognition both domestically and internationally, winning the “Gold Medal at the 49th Geneva International Invention Exhibition” and the “ISTA Global Innovation and Invention Award.” “Our company’s booth is often crowded with visitors,” Zhang Tianyi said.
○ “Years ago, there were already Chinese players in this track, so we can say that both domestic and international players are at the starting line simultaneously,” Zhang Tianyi metaphorically stated. Dexterous hands must be sufficiently “sensitive” to be “skillful.” The challenge lies in achieving the right balance among “rigid, soft, and flexible” aspects. In different application scenarios, the robot must first sense the material, texture, and temperature of the object’s surface, convert this information into electrical signals to transmit to the control system, and then precisely match different forces and angles while also being able to autonomously model, navigate, and avoid obstacles to perform human-like actions such as grasping, pinching, twisting, pulling, pushing, pressing, grabbing, and lifting.
○ The Zhongke Silicon Era dexterous hand is the only series of products internationally that covers multiple application scenarios, with three models available: humanoid dexterous hand, general-purpose intelligent dexterous hand, and high-speed adaptive dexterous hand. From software to hardware, from the core embodied intelligence algorithms for dexterous operations to the structure, tendons, drives, and sensors, all hardware is self-developed by the team, with 100% localization of core components. Additionally, there are wearable data gloves, motion capture systems, and bionic arms for remote control of the dexterous hand, with the company’s core competitiveness focused on the upper limb capabilities of humanoid robots.
○ “The ultimate goal of the dexterous hand is to work like a human, and in the future, it will face a vast blue ocean market,” Zhang Tianyi explained. Focusing on special operations, life services, and industrial applications, the team has also developed three complete humanoid dexterous operation robots: the “Fearless” model for bomb disposal, biochemical nuclear hazard handling, or operations in dangerous scenarios; the “Worry-free” model for public service, home service, and elderly care operations; and the “Limitless” model primarily for autonomous adaptive grasping, feeding, sorting, and assembly of diverse industrial components.
○ Having settled in Nanjing for less than a year, Zhongke Silicon Era has developed rapidly. Currently, the company has received millions in investments from several institutions, including Qilin Venture Capital, Shengjing Jiacheng, and Mingchuan Capital, and some products have achieved small-batch production and are being sold to humanoid robot manufacturers. The next step for the company is to launch new products priced in the thousands and actively explore international markets.
02Upstream and Downstream Enterprises Crowd the “Starting Line”
○ When the current is too high, pull the switch! In the early hours of March 15, in a factory’s power distribution room, the “Tian Kui No. 1” robot detected excessive current and immediately acted, using its dexterous fingers to pull the switch and rotate the knob, operating like a skilled professional.
○ This is the world’s first humanoid robot to receive IIC T6-level explosion-proof certification, released by Nanjing Tianchuang Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. This robot stands 2.2 meters tall, operates with dual arms, and can easily lift 25 kilograms. Its lower body employs a more mature and stable wheeled walking mechanism, making it more suitable for industrial applications. Equipped with a high-performance core chip and a full-space perception radar system, it can receive commands for motion control, achieving absolute motion precision of ±0.1 millimeters.
○ “Nanjing has a national-level new electric power (smart grid) equipment cluster. As long as we make our products well, we can quickly open up the market right in our ‘backyard,'” said Liu Shuang, chairman of Tianchuang Electronics. This product can be used for human-replacement operations and maintenance in industries such as electric power, offshore wind power, thermal power, nuclear power, and petrochemicals, as well as in emergency rescue scenarios. It has become a “hot item” right after its launch, with customer orders already queuing up.
○ The humanoid robot industry chain can be divided into three core modules: the “brain,” the “limbs,” and scene implementation, each of which gives rise to multiple technological high grounds. In the past two to three years, it has been like hearing the starting gun; many Nanjing enterprises have already geared up to stand at the starting line of various sub-tracks.
○ Teams specializing in core components of robots often have academic backgrounds. Dai Zhendong, a doctoral supervisor and professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, founded Nanjing Shenyuan Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. The six-dimensional force sensors developed by the team are known as the “force-sensing nerves” of robots. These sensors can be used for testing large equipment weighing up to hundreds of tons or for testing the six-dimensional forces on insects weighing as little as 10 grams, covering the needs of humanoid robots, automobiles, aviation, new energy, and scientific research. The company is also the leading unit of the national key research and development project “Key Technologies and Industrialization of Intelligent Six-Dimensional Force and Tactile Sensors for Robots,” having received angel round financing from the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Zhongke Haichuang Fund.
○ The reducer is the most costly component in the robot body. Nanjing Inks Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. focuses on robot reducer motors, with a team composed of master’s graduates from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Their joint module integrates reducers, motors, drivers, and encoders, suitable for complex motion control systems in bipedal robots, quadrupedal robots, and robotic arms. The company has received millions in financing from leading institutions like Oasis Capital. “Our products have already achieved mass production, and this year we will add 2,000 square meters of factory space to expand production capacity,” the company’s representative stated.
○ At Jiangsu Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd., the team has just secured an order for 100 welding robotic arms from Russia, focusing their research and development on electro-hydraulic servo humanoid robots. Electro-hydraulic servo technology is highly complex and has a high barrier to entry, and the high-explosive electro-hydraulic servo system is a significant obstacle to the development of bipedal robots in China. Jicui Intelligent Manufacturing expects to launch the country’s first high-dynamic ultra-realistic humanoid bipedal robot within this year, overcoming the “bottleneck” of electro-hydraulic servo technology.
○ Humanoid robots for life services are also beginning to appear among the citizens of Nanjing. During the Qinhuai Lantern Festival, the Yijia and RK100 humanoid robots made appearances at the Confucius Temple; the “coolest robot” dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, wearing smart sunglasses and a mech helmet, frequently stole the spotlight on the streets. The latter is produced by Huaxia Robotics (Nanjing) Co., Ltd., which claims it is the world’s first mass-produced upright walking humanoid robot with a human-like face. They use bionic silicone skin for a realistic touch, with precise facial and neck expressions, capable of recognizing user tones and responding accordingly, applicable in six major scenarios: exhibition explanation, reception guidance, smart health care, smart homes, children’s education, and bionic dolls. “Some have questioned whether interactive service robots are just a gimmick, as they are not as ‘useful’ as industrial robots,” said the company’s general manager Dai Peng. “What we aim to do is to incubate more practical scenarios based on technological innovation, allowing people to see its prospects, gradually dismantling the technical dependencies from the expected form, and getting closer to the imagination step by step.”
03Must Robots Be “Humanoid”?
○ Must robots be “humanoid”? Is the development of humanoid robots inevitable? This question has puzzled many enterprises in the industry.
○ Industrial robots are typically designed for specific industrial production tasks, with relatively mature standardized products and solutions available. In contrast, humanoid robots, which can perform many tasks, find it challenging to achieve economies of scale. For manufacturing powerhouses like Jiangsu and Nanjing, the robot industry has developed early, with a full range of categories and wide applications. According to statistics from the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, the Nanjing robot industry has built a product system that primarily focuses on industrial robots, with collaborative, logistics, safety emergency, public service, personal consumption, and medical health robots developing in synergy across multiple fields. With a wave of “intelligent transformation and digital upgrading” in the past two years, many enterprises have achieved intelligent digitalization, with robotic arms and handling robots being ubiquitous, and dark factories and unmanned factories are no longer rare. The application of industrial robots is thriving, while the practical application of humanoid robots remains limited.
○ “Humanoid robots still struggle to perform efficiently on real production lines, achieving only 1/10 of the efficiency of existing robotic arms,” some business owners reported during surveys conducted by relevant departments. The accuracy of data collection and model training for humanoid robots is difficult to meet actual needs, and the humanoid robots that can be used are costly and inefficient. In the consumer product sector, some well-known domestic humanoid robot companies currently rely on providing performance, companionship, and entertainment services for profit. In the industrial sector, many believe that whether a robot resembles a human is not important; what matters is that it is functional and user-friendly, without the need to blindly follow trends.
○ As a new phenomenon, although the research and manufacturing of humanoid robots are not yet perfect and their practical applications are still maturing, creating a robot that can adapt to human living scenarios may be best achieved with humanoid robots. According to Goldman Sachs, the global humanoid robot market is expected to exceed $154 billion by 2035, with even more astonishing growth in the Chinese market. This growth is driven not only by the demand for industrial automation but also closely related to changes in population structure—accelerating aging is creating a need for care and companionship scenarios, while rising labor costs in manufacturing are pushing for further “machine replacement”.
The Yijia and RK100 humanoid robots
○ As the industry opens up, technological advancements and continuous price reductions are making mass production and commercial applications possible. Currently, through localization, the cost of humanoid robots is moving from the million-dollar range towards 200,000 yuan. Major companies like Huawei and Xiaomi are entering the market, and the path for breakthroughs in humanoid robot hardware, technological iteration, and scenario penetration is becoming increasingly clear.
○ It is essential to be “down-to-earth,” tailoring approaches based on industrial realities, while also “looking to the stars,” strategically positioning to seize opportunities, and at least preparing to reserve technologies to form competitive advantages, which has become a consensus among governments and enterprises.
○ The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “Guiding Opinions on the Innovative Development of Humanoid Robots” in 2023, clearly stating that by 2025, an innovative system for humanoid robots will be initially established, cultivating 2-3 globally influential ecological enterprises and creating 2-3 industrial development clusters. At the end of last year, the “Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of the Robot Industry in Nanjing (2024-2026)” was released, proposing that by 2026, the overall development level of the robot industry will rank among the top in the country, creating a “1+N+1” complete machine system, with the last “1” being a forward-looking layout of the humanoid robot industry, comprehensively promoting the research and development of humanoid robot components such as the “brain,” “small brain,” and “limbs,” and establishing a general-purpose platform for humanoid robots with initial small-batch production capabilities.
○ In various parks in Nanjing, policies and funding are also being synchronized. In Qilin Science and Technology Innovation Park, as a “regional innovation highland” co-built by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Jiangsu Province, the park has become one of the most concentrated areas for scientific and technological innovation resources outside of Beijing’s Zhongguancun. The Qilin Venture Capital Fund insists on “investing small and early,” proactively laying out new tracks such as embodied intelligence, and has invested early in several “Zhongke System” AI enterprises, providing patient capital support for hard-core technological innovation. The newly introduced Zhongke Yixiang “brain-computer interface” team has already completed the production of the first domestic brain-computer interface flexible electrode implantation robot and developed a non-invasive navigation surgical robot.
○ In the China (Nanjing) Software Valley, an embodied intelligence robot application center was established last week, aiming to address pain points in the development of the humanoid robot industry, such as difficulties in data acquisition and limited scenarios, and is expected to fill the gap in large-scale scene data collection for humanoid robots in China; in the Jiangning Development Zone High-tech Park, efforts are being made to promote the domestic industrial robot leader Estun to lead the creation of a future robot and artificial intelligence joint research and development experimental center, a humanoid robot and core component pilot platform, and a provincial-level robot industry benchmark incubator and other innovative platforms, while planning to build an innovation center for embodied intelligence in Jiangsu Province.
○ The curtain on the humanoid robot industry has just been raised, and Nanjing has already taken its place on the track.
Nanjing Estun Automation Co., Ltd.’s humanoid robot Coolzhu Codroid 01
The following information is worth noting
Source: Xinhua Daily
Contributed by: Wang Shen
Reviewed by: Ma Ye
Published by: Liang Huachang
