Nation sets standards to propel humanoid robot industry toward mass production

China's humanoid robot industry is accelerating its transition from technological exploration to large-scale commercialization, with standards playing a foundational and guiding role in this critical phase, officials said at an industry conference in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology convened the 2026 annual plenary session of its Humanoid Robot and Embodied Intelligence Standardization Technical Committee, alongside a "Standards Week" event, gathering hundreds of representatives from government, academia, research institutes, and enterprises.

Addressing the event, Vice-Minister of Industry and Information Technology Ke Jixin revealed that the humanoid robot industry is moving from single-unit prototypes and stage demonstrations toward batch deliveries, which significantly raises the requirements for coordination across R&D, production, testing, application, and safety governance," Ke said.

Ke emphasized that standards must not remain on paper, but should be actively implemented through promotional efforts like "Standards Week" activities, driving technology iteration, supporting large-scale product application, and reinforcing safety foundations.

Zhang Feng, Party secretary of the Chinese Institute of Electronics Council, said that 2026 marks the inaugural year of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. He called for industry efforts in three areas — strategic foresight, standards system development, and industrial ecosystem cultivation — to accelerate the shift from technology demonstration to scaled deployment and deepened integration across various sectors.

Wang He, founder and CTO of Beijing Galbot Co Ltd, outlined a roadmap for general-purpose embodied intelligence foundation models. He said that building a unified "brain and cerebellum" — the embodied intelligence foundation model — to achieve a deep understanding of human movement and control mechanisms represents a critical technological pathway for pushing humanoid robots toward the "tipping point" of artificial general intelligence.

The event also marked the official establishment of the WG7 Data Working Group under the technical committee, a move seen as crucial for strengthening the standards system and promoting efficient data circulation and compliant utilization across the industry.