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Over 27 different models of humanoid robots were unveiled at the World Robot Conference 2024 held in Beijing, China. The five-day event was aimed at displaying the latest advancements in robotics and reportedly attracted over 169 exhibitors with more than 600 innovative products being showcased.
The annual conference comes amid China’s push to overtake Western rivals like Tesla and dominate the humanoid robot industry. These efforts have also received backing from the Chinese government with a committee led by President Xi Jinping recently drawing up a policy to build “new productive forces” in technology.
Additionally, investments in China’s robotics industry have surpassed over 100 billion yuan over the last 10 years, according to a report by CNBC. From delivery bots to robot chefs, here’s a quick look at a few of the notable humanoids to make an appearance at this year’s world robot conference.
The Astribot S1 is a humanoid assistant robot developed by Stardust Intelligence. It was first seen carrying out tasks such as folding a shirt and pouring wine into a glass in a demo video that was released by the Chinese startup in April this year. At the conference, the Astribot S1 stationed at the booth was able to demonstrate its calligraphy skills to attendees, according to a report by Global Times.
NAVIAI, a humanoid robot built by the China-based Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, made its debut at the Beijing conference. It was reportedly seen flaunting unique skills such as delivering a speech, making tea, and playing chess. The 60 kilogram-heavy humanoid has been designed to adopt a quasi-human nature, according to the makers of NAVIAI.
In the run up to the conference, robotics startup Agibot revealed five new robots that are capable of making deliveries. The Shanghai-based venture which was founded by a former Huawei employee hopes to have the humanoids delivering items by mid-October while manufacturing a large batch of 300 robots. Besides delivery, these bots have also been designed to act as sales people, gallery guides or pickers of factory parts, according to CNBC.
Japanese company UniX AI’s dual-arm humanoid robot on wheels is intended to be used as a home service bot that helps out with household chores such as doing the laundry or cooking breakfast. For instance, Wanda is equipped with stain recognition and multi-motive primitive fusion tech that helps it wash the dishes. Wanda’s cooking skills in the kitchen were reportedly on display at the conference.
Performing Chinese martial arts, playing a stringed musical instrument called the Zither, and opening soda cans were some of the other activities effortlessly carried out by robots at the Beijing conference.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s flagship Optimus humanoid robot also made an appearance at the world robot conference. However, the model reportedly sat motionless in a glass case as attendees clicked pictures of it. Recently, Elon Musk-owned Tesla began hiring people to wear motion capture suits and virtual reality (VR) headsets in order to train the humanoid.
Earlier this year, Musk announced that two Optimus robots were already working autonomously at one of Tesla’s factories. In July, he posted on X that “Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026.”
The Beijing conference also saw an exhibition of various 3D-printed flexible robotic manipulators produced by Shenzhen-based Wisson Technology. These parts serve as pneumatic artificial muscles to power the robots and cost much less than traditional transmission devices as the former category of products are made out of plastic.
However, questions have been raised about the defective rates of such robotic parts. “The whole supply chain still needs to address issues with product reliability,” Yi Gang, founder of Shanghai-based Ti5 Robot, a company specialising in integrated joints, was quoted as saying by Reuters.
