China’s Huawei Technologies is to work with UBTech Robotics, a major robot manufacturer, to push the advancement of humanoid robots for industrial and home use, the companies said.
The announcement comes as China moves toward broader adoption of robots in various use cases, amidst AI-fuelled interest in the technology.
The deal seeks to “accelerate the transition of humanoid robots from laboratory innovations” to “large-scale adoption in industrial, household and other scenarios”, the companies said in a joint announcement in the tech hub of Shenzhen, where both are headquartered.
Smart factories
The firms said they would collaborate on smart factories featuring humanoid robots and would develop bipedal or wheeled service robots for home use.
Huawei said it would work with UBTech to establish a lab focused on what they called “embodied intelligence”, or AI embedded in a robotic form.
The companies said they would seek to capitalise on Huawei’s increasingly powerful Ascend and Kunpeng AI processors, its cloud computing and large AI model technologies.
Huawei is one of the companies leading China’s tech self-sufficiency drive, which has been pushed into overdrive by a trade war between China and the US.
The company, which has been under US sanctions since 2019, has developed increasingly popular AI chips at a time when Nvidia processors face increasingly strict export controls.
Humanoid robots
The humanoid robotics field has received a boost of its own from surging interest in generative AI, which has raised the prospect of robots that can carry out complex tasks and respond to natural-language queries.
The domestic Chinese robotics industry is expected to double this year to 5.3 billion yuan ($740m, £560m), according to figures from LeadeRobot.
UBTech is one of China’s leading robot developers, saying in March it plans to produce more than 1,000 humanoid robots this year.
The company has separately formed deals with household appliance manufacturer Midea Group to deploy humanoid robots in factories and furniture chain Easyhome New Retail around humanoid robots for the home.
