August 20, 2026, (Inside AI) — Humanoid robots sorted parcels, packed mobile phones, and assisted with household chores at the World Robot Conference in Beijing on Wednesday. More than 300 mostly domestic companies exhibited over 2,000 products and launched 150 new items, according to organizers.
The five-day event signals a shift from staged demos to real commercial deployment. Chinese firms are testing humanoids in logistics, manufacturing, and service settings, aiming to convert investor enthusiasm into practical labor.
Unitree, China's best-known humanoid maker, saw its shares surge nearly sixfold in their Shanghai trading debut on Wednesday. Its initial public offering was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors. Following Unitree's IPO, startup Lumos Robotics and the robotics division of Chery Automobile, China's largest auto exporter, told Reuters they were also considering stock market listings.
Madison Huang, a senior Nvidia executive and daughter of CEO Jensen Huang, made an unannounced visit to the event. She watched robots perform flying kicks and dance routines before stopping at a companion-robot booth to ask about its sensors. Huang oversees marketing for Nvidia's Omniverse and robotics platforms, software used to simulate and test physical AI systems that can perceive and act in the real world.
Her visit highlighted foreign suppliers' role in China's robot push despite U.S. restrictions on advanced AI chip exports. RealSense, a U.S.-based maker of vision systems for robots and one of the few foreign exhibitors, said it was building sales partnerships in China.
"We see China as a very strategic market for us," said Mike Nielsen, the company's chief marketing officer. "It is becoming the center of humanoid technology."
Logistics leads the first wave of deployment
At the opening ceremony, Xin Guobin, vice minister of industry and information technology, said robotics had become "an important force" in China's economic and social development, local media reported.
Industrial humanoid firm Leju demonstrated robots moving and sorting crates and small objects. "Our most common application scenarios are in logistics," said Zhang Dapeng, assistant vice president at Leju. Zhang said European factories and Chinese auto plants were using Leju robots to move boxes and load components.
At Robotera's booth, a humanoid torso on a wheeled tripod base sorted parcels. A company official said the robot had been deployed at China Post logistics sites since last year using Robotera's AI software. A sales representative said Robotera had more than 100 parcel-sorting robots in 15 warehouses nationwide.
Assembly lines test precision and patience
DexForce demonstrated humanoid robots packing mobile phones into boxes on an assembly line. The robots have been deployed since early this year at a Lens Technology factory, a Chinese supplier of touchscreens and other components to Apple and Huawei, said DexForce official Nicole Yang.
Yang said the machines had millimetre-level operating accuracy and could detect and correct errors, such as a phone being placed at an angle. "In theory, human beings are the most dexterous," Yang said. "But many workers in factories are unwilling to do this kind of boring work."
Lumos Robotics is already using robots to automate the assembly of key modules at its factory and plans to introduce them into final assembly, Chief Executive Yu Chao said. X Square Robot, known for its focus on household chores, is looking to move beyond short home-service trials. Its longest deployment has lasted one month, and it is testing robots in hundreds of homes this year before gradual commercialisation next year, said co-founder Yang Qian.
RealSense's Nielsen said the companies most likely to succeed would be those able to put robots into active production environments. He added that China's rapid development cycle was pushing suppliers to move more quickly. "The product cycles for robots are more like six to eight months, not three to four years," he said.
