China's industrial robot installations are 11.7 times South Korea's
China is rolling out humanoid robots across its industries, from TV broadcasting and convenience stores to factory production lines. According to the IT industry on the 8th, China's state-run news agency Xinhua unveiled anchor robots 'Xinyan' and 'Xinyu', developed with robotics company UBTECH, at the 'AI and Chinese Modernization' forum of the 7th World Media Summit held in Beijing on the 5th.
The appearance of the two human-sized robots was designed by film director Zhang Yimou, and at the forum, Xinyan personally greeted the audience and read the opening news. The two robots are connected to Xinhua's AI current-affairs information agent 'Xinhua Miaodian', delivering fact-checked news. Zhou Jian, chairman of UBTECH, explained that this structure reduces the hallucination risk of generative AI producing inaccurate content. UBTECH handled everything from artificial skin and hardware to the operating system, a large language model for emotional expression, and finished product manufacturing.
UBTECH is also supplying humanoids to industrial sites beyond broadcasting. The company began mass production and delivery of its industrial humanoid 'Walker S2' in November last year and said cumulative orders have exceeded 800 million yuan (about 112 million dollars). It aims to secure an annual production capacity of 5,000 units this year.
The Chinese government has set a goal of putting major humanoid products into 'work mode' — actual operational deployment at representative sites such as manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, retail, healthcare, and disaster response — by the end of this year. In South Korea as well, the government relaxed industrial robot safety regulations in mid-last month, opening the way to deploy 20 humanoid robots at semiconductor, automotive, shipbuilding, and logistics sites.
According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), China's new industrial robot installations last year reached 354,200 units, about 11.7 times South Korea's 30,200.
