From farm work to Henan Opera: Inside a 'preschool' for humanoid robots

Figures provided during the visit show the scale behind that training. As China’s third platform — and the first in Central China — dedicated to embodied AI data training and scenario applications, the Central China Heterogeneous Humanoid Robot Training Center has deployed 140 humanoid robots across 27 high-quality real-world scenarios in six major fields.

The center has generated more than 20,000 hours of high-quality real-machine data. Such data are what allow these "newborns" to develop higher levels of accuracy, precision, and adaptability.

The broader national strategy must ultimately be measured by concrete steps toward industrialization and commercialization. A robot showroom and service center, which opened in March and allows customers to interact with the machines, is one such step.

"Our main goal is to shorten the distance between the public and embodied AI, and to help people feel that this technology is not remote or abstract, but accessible and capable of entering ordinary homes," Chen said.

When I stepped out of the company, the afternoon sunlight outside felt warm. Watching humanoid robots interact with visitors in the showroom, I realized that what I had seen was not only a display of technological progress, but also a glimpse of how the country’s blueprint for intelligent industries is taking shape at the local level.

The future of embodied AI no longer seems far away. It is being shaped step by step through data, grounded in everyday needs, and moving steadily toward real life application.