China’s humanoid robots take centre stage for Lunar New Year showtime
BNN Bloomberg
China’s most-watched TV show, the annual CCTV Spring Festival gala, on Monday showcased the country’s cutting-edge industrial policy and Beijing’s push to dominate humanoid robots and the future of manufacturing.
Four rising humanoid robot startups - Unitree Robotics, Galbot, Noetix and MagicLab - demonstrated their products at the gala, a televised event and touchstone for China comparable to the Super Bowl for the United States.
The programme’s first three sketches prominently featured humanoid robots, including a lengthy martial arts demonstration where over a dozen Unitree humanoids performed sophisticated fight sequences waving swords, poles and nunchucks in close proximity to human children performers.
The fight sequences included a technically ambitious one that imitated the wobbly moves and backward falls of China’s “drunken boxing” martial arts style, showing innovations in multi-robot coordination and fault recovery - where a robot can get up after falling down.
The programme’s opening sketch also prominently featured Alibaba’s AI chatbot Doubao, while four Noetix humanoid robots appeared alongside human actors in a comedy skit and MagicLab robots performed a synchronised dance with human performers during the song “We Are Made in China”.
The hype surrounding China’s humanoid robot sector comes as major players including AgiBot and Unitree prepare for initial public offerings this year, and domestic artificial intelligence startups release a raft of frontier models during the lucrative nine-day Lunar New Year public holiday.
