At Tokyo's Haneda International Airport in Japan, Chinese Humanoid Robot are being used on the ground handling site starting this month. In the airport apron, where more than 60 million passengers pass through annually, these robots are helping move travelers' luggage and cargo. At a recycling facility in London, a Humanoid Robot made by a Chinese company has also begun sorting waste on a conveyor belt.
Recently, Chinese Humanoid Robot have been steadily deployed across industrial sites around the world. Beyond handling manufacturing in factories, the scope of Chinese robots is rapidly expanding into areas such as recycling sorting lines that people do not want to work on and high-risk worksites.
According to the industry on the 7th, JAL Ground Service under Japan Airlines and GMO AI & Robotics began a ground handling pilot at Haneda Airport this month using a Chinese Unitree Humanoid Robot. Through 2028, they will verify step by step how much robots can assist with physically demanding tasks such as loading and unloading baggage and cargo.
As the labor shortage worsened due to an aging population, they turned to a response in which people handle core tasks such as safety management while robots assist with repetitive, labor-intensive work.
At the Sharp Group recycling facility in Rainham, east London, Alpha, a Humanoid made by China's RealMan Robotics, is learning to sort waste. The facility processes up to 280,000 tons of recyclables annually, but dust and noise are severe, pushing the worker turnover rate to 40%. A British robotics company is testing a method of adapting a Chinese robot platform to the actual recycling process and placing it on the sorting line.
Chinese robots have long been deployed across production lines at home. Shanghai GM, a joint venture between SAIC Motor and General Motors (GM) of the United States, introduced the wheeled Humanoid Robot Nengzai No. 1 to the mass-production battery line for the Buick Electra E7 at the end of March.
Jointly developed by Shanghai GM and Shanghai robot startup AgiBot, the robot handles the process of picking up and loading battery cells. Whereas existing automated equipment moved according to fixed positions and motions, Nengzai No. 1 uses visual recognition and bimanual coordination to identify incoming parts and plan its own picking path. Assigning high-risk electrical work to the robot reduces worker burden and allows flexible operation of the production line in less space than existing automation equipment.
CATL, the world's largest battery maker in China, also deployed humanoids to its production line late last year. CATL introduced Xiaomo, a Humanoid Robot developed by Spirit AI, to the battery pack line at its Luoyang Zhongzhou production base in Henan province. In the pre-shipment inspection process for battery packs, Xiaomo connects high-voltage connectors and checks for abnormalities. CATL said Xiaomo's work cycle is similar to that of a skilled worker, and in environments where multiple battery models are produced consecutively, its daily workload is three times that of a person.
Robot deployment is also spreading in public and everyday life. At major intersections around West Lake in Hangzhou, 15 AI traffic robots were deployed on the 1st, the first day of the Labor Day holiday. Wearing yellow vests and standing on wheeled bases, the robots answer tourists' questions, warn pedestrians and cyclists about traffic violations, and guide vehicle flow.
On lifestyle information platform 58.com in China, a cleaning service in which a person, a wheeled robot, and an on-site engineer work as a team also began in March. The roughly 1.5-meter-tall robot made by Chinese robotics startup X Square Robot handles repetitive tasks such as wiping tables and cleaning floors, while people take on removing grease and mold in hard-to-reach areas.
The Chinese government is expanding support by making the robotics industry a state-led growth pillar. In the 15th five-year plan for 2026–2030 released in March, China singled out robots and physical AI as core elements of strategic emerging industries.
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said, "China is carrying out a plan to shift the center of gravity of AI research from software to manufacturing and service sites," and predicted, "In the latter half of this five-year plan, commercialization of robots will proceed faster."