Humanoid robots are now

The Chinese government is also investing heavily in data collection, which several executives said was the industry’s main pain point but also an area where China had an advantage.

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Xiaomi has started trialing its CyberOne humanoid robots on the production line at its electric vehicle factory in Beijing, with company president Lu Weibing telling CNBC the bots completed over 90 per cent of assigned work during a three-hour shift.The two robots handles tasks like installing nuts and moving materials, matching the factory’s brisk pace—a new car rolls off the line every 76 seconds. But Lu was quick to temper expectations, calling the robots “interns” rather than full-fledged workers.”The robots in our production lines weren’t doing an official job—more like the interns,” he told CNBC at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

China’s robot race is heating up fast

Xiaomi isn’t alone in pushing humanoid robots toward real-world factory use. Chinese EV startup XPeng has developed its own humanoid, and smartphone maker Honor recently debuted its first model. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets peg the global humanoid robot market at $9 trillion by 2050, with China expected to account for over 60 per cent of that.The country already deploys more industrial robots than any other nation. But bipedal, AI-driven humanoids working alongside humans on fast-moving production lines is a different ballgame—and Xiaomi’s trial is one of the earliest real examples of it working.

Humanoid robots still have a long way to go

Lu said Xiaomi remains “bullish” on robotics but acknowledged it’s “too early to say” how big the market will ultimately be. The CyberOne robot, first unveiled in 2022, still isn’t commercially available.A PR video shared by the company shows the two bots on opposite ends of the assembly line, carefully applying lug nuts to a vehicle chassis. It’s not exactly lightning-fast—a pair of humans could likely do it quicker—but the fact that humanoid robots can now keep pace with a 76-second production cycle at all is a notable milestone.

In the US, Elon Musk has been steering Tesla toward robotics and AI, repurposing its Fremont factory to build Optimus humanoid robots after ending Model S and X production in January.

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