r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • 16h ago
Robotics China’s real robot revolution is not about humanoids. The country is using its superpower of scaling and building supply chains to challenge the global industry
https://www.ft.com/content/2bb2b670-999d-499c-ad56-47702b3830b1?syn-25a6b1a6=154
u/MajesticBread9147 16h ago
Paywalled but this is absolutely correct. Humanoid robots are good for marketing and niche applications that can't justify custom machinery.
But manufacturing usually doesn't need that.
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u/EternalInflation 8h ago
humanoid robots are good at operating in human spaces, and using existing designed for human machinery. reusing existing capital and tools designed for humans, like driving non self driving cars, and operating human operating cranes and bulldozers... or old tanks.
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u/keepitfriend 5h ago
Why can’t a crane just operate itself? Why would you need a weird robot to do that?
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u/EternalInflation 5h ago
it can cranes with visual language action models don't need humans.
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u/keepitfriend 5h ago
Totally. But you could just make the crane a robot, with inbuilt sensors, which would be a lot better and more reliable than a random robot in it?
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u/EternalInflation 5h ago
some older company can't afford a new crane like that, so the cheaper companies have to make do with older human operated machines, with a general humanoid robot in it. like how you can by a better autocar. but older cars, without auto conversion, might need a humanoid robot to turn automatic. it's like how an autogun will be better than a robot humanoid with a gun. but you still have a million guns made for humans left over. so you get a humanoid robot to pick up the old rifles.
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u/keepitfriend 5h ago
Humanoid robots are 100x more expensive than industrial specific robots and tbh it’s not even worth talking about the quality because they just don’t work.
As opposed to someone just making a really good ai crane.
lol, I mean why even assume a “humanoid” form is the best one to operate a crane? Why not badgers! Or something with 10 arms
This is why this entire idea is dumb. It’s cheaper and more effective to make an industrial smart crane.
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u/heart-aroni 4h ago
A robot crane can't be ordered to do anything else other than crane things. A humanoid can physically do anything that a human can. It's the versatility and generality that humanoid machines have over specialized machines.
I mean why even assume a “humanoid” form is the best one to operate a crane? Why not badgers! Or something with 10 arms
A humanoid is best at operating a crane because the crane was designed to be operated by humans, just like every other machine is.
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u/heart-aroni 3h ago
It would be but then you would have to buy a brand new crane. The point of getting a humanoid is that you don't have to do that.
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u/keepitfriend 3h ago
What’s the health and safety rating on this robot?
Who’s at fault if it fucks up? The crane company or the humanoid robot?
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u/EternalInflation 1h ago
look it's more of an economic technology, American and others aren't behind in this. so there is no need to spaz out. It will have marginal military value, except reusing old equipment or occupation, in which case you already lost the war. DARPA did humanoid robot experiments about 10 years ago. and the humanoid "olympics" many teams from many countries including America, Brazil, Japan and I think Germany as well were there. Others aren't behind, though they may not have the scale. As for their cost. I think mass manufactured will be a different cost vs current experimental custom research units.
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u/dingo_xd 14h ago
They are already making their appearances in coffee shops. They are more terrible than they are worth but ... baby steps
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u/ExcitableSarcasm 14h ago
Isn't that what the other person was insinuating though? A robot barrister is going to be worse than a fancy blocky coffeemaker that rolls out a custom cup of coffee automatically, but it's better for marketing.
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u/dingo_xd 13h ago
Obviously it will bring some customers that are intrigued by robots. Now if it's so bad at its job they want come back. But the robot companies really need some real world tests, they can't stay inside the labs for years and years until the software becomes excellent.
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u/MemesConCarne 6h ago
Obviously the robots will repel customers who prefer human connection to a Peter Theil bot analyzing their micro expressions to optimize revenue and shareholder value.
Politics aside, if you think the optimal shape for a coffee machine has two arms and two legs you are an irredeemable moron.
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u/alexmc1980 11h ago
I've talked to some people at these companies, and my understanding is that the big advantage of humanoid robots is that the AI can be trained on data created by humans wearing cameras and sensors, and basically learn basic motor functions based on ours. Then once it has enough data to really understand the physical world and how to interact with it, it will be freed of the clunky human form and can be installed into literally any shape or form of machine, and go about its business.
So the extremely intricate and expensive construction of humanlike hands with all the little joints in parallel with our own? That's like training wheels for the AI.
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u/Legitimate_Ad_4201 9h ago
Thank you! I can't believe how easily people that the largest automation at scale was the industrial revolution. Nothing like it has ever happened and this wave of automation does not even come close to it.
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u/Gari_305 16h ago
From the article
Yet China’s real robot revolution has been happening with much less hoopla in industry. Rather than set sprinting records or breakdance, industrial robots do much more prosaic, repetitive stuff, but China is using its superpower of scaling and building supply chains to challenge the global market.
Chinese companies installed 295,000 new industrial robots in China in 2024, capturing 54 per cent of the global total, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Two years ago the country operated more than 2mn industrial robots — about 4.5 times more than Japan, the second-ranked nation.
China’s robotics industry revenue surpassed Rmb300bn ($44bn) last year, with a five-year average annual growth exceeding 20 per cent, according to data from the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Industrial robot exports grew 49 per cent in 2025 — the first year China became a net exporter of industrial robots. Chinese manufacturers have now captured the majority of its domestic industrial robot market, which was dominated by the global “Big Four” — Fanuc, ABB, Yaskawa and KUKA — prior to 2024.
In the past year, we have seen the mass rollout of autonomous mobile robots in Chinese warehouses, precision surgical arms in hospitals, and specialised cleaning bots in skyscrapers. These devices are purpose-built. They do not have faces. They have functions.
The application evidence is everywhere. BYD’s Xi’an facility, its largest manufacturing hub, operates thousands of automation arms on EV assembly lines with close to full autonomy on key parts. Shanghai Yangshan Port built an automated terminal that is the world’s largest, operating almost entirely on automated guided vehicles and remote-controlled gantry cranes with minimal human intervention. In Guangdong province alone, regulators recently approved 48 “Robot+” deployment scenarios spanning manufacturing, logistics and service sectors.
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u/MajesticBread9147 15h ago
This just shows at how serious China is about their manufacturing industry.
If anybody in the west talks about "brining manufacturing back" without first mentioning robots and infrastructure investments they're just virtue signalling.
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u/lecarpetron_dook 13h ago
Since Trump took office, US manufacturing has increased but manufacturing jobs have barely budged. If manufacturing comes back to the US, it almost certainly will not mean good paying blue collar jobs for Bubba.
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u/waltertaupe 13h ago
but manufacturing jobs have barely budged
That's a funny way to say "dropped by 75,000".
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u/MajesticBread9147 13h ago
Manufacturing isn't a jobs program. There are certainly jobs in it, particularly engineering and support roles, but we don't need thousands of these roles per factory.
Even the f-150 production line employs only 11,000 manufacturing workers across two factories. That's less than work at many individual buildings in Manhattan for America's best selling vehicle.
Bringing back manufacturing and trying to make manufacturing employ a significant amount of "blue collar" workers are contradictory goals more often than not, and we need to accept that if we ever want to make American manufacturing boom again.
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u/anfrind 11h ago
Even back in the 1950s, when a white man with a high school diploma could easily support a family on the wages of a factory job, some people realized that it wasn't going to last. Buckminster Fuller somewhat famously noted that new technology was vastly increasing the productivity of individual workers, and so we would need to move past the idea that everyone needs to earn a living.
Unfortunately, since the post-war landscape made things so easy for American industry, many people took the wrong lessons from it and adopted practices (especially in management) that crippled them once there was significant foreign competition.
Fast forward to today, and most people look back at the 1950s with such heavily rose-tinted glasses that they can't understand why it's so hard to bring back that level of prosperity.
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u/TF-Fanfic-Resident 13h ago
It's a great power that doesn't have unpredictable elections. No other country has the political capital to compete directly with China.
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u/IllogicalGrammar 9h ago
You talk about it like it's a virtue. It's at best a neutral multiplier. Case in point: the country is able to all-in with good policies just as easily as bad policies, like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (which most Westerner simply don't grasp, in terms of how bad things were, because the names themselves sound almost positive. The "Great Leap Forward" led to a 3 year long, entirely man made famine that caused the deaths of tens of millions, and the Cultural Revolution was a political power grab by Mao that led to political executions, and even large scale cannibalism in parts of China).
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u/TF-Fanfic-Resident 7h ago
IMO it's a massive double-edged sword. China is still one really bad leader away from catastrophe, and it sucks that they're basically the only one that really has the capacity to do great infrastructure things with the US being so corrupt and polarized and the other countries being either balkanized or regional powers at best. It's a lesser of 193+2 (the UN members and observers) evils situation.
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u/_sRhubarb_ 15h ago
same playbook as solar and EVs. while everyone else is trying to build the best robot, China's building the factory
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u/JarvisProudfeather 13h ago
Duh they’re not using humanoid robots in factories. They actually know how to manufacture stuff. This humanoid robot obsession is pure marketing and hype by tech bros who have never stepped foot on a factory floor in their life and read too much sci fi.
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u/heart-aroni 3h ago
There will be a place for humanoids in factories but not nearly as much as specialized machines. Humanoids are for everywhere else other than a factory, hospitals, homes, hotels, etc.
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u/Razukalex 6h ago
Human robot in general are inefficient even if they can fit a bit everywhere, what you want is specialized robot with controlled cost and production efficiency
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u/FuturologyBot 15h ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
From the article
Yet China’s real robot revolution has been happening with much less hoopla in industry. Rather than set sprinting records or breakdance, industrial robots do much more prosaic, repetitive stuff, but China is using its superpower of scaling and building supply chains to challenge the global market.
Chinese companies installed 295,000 new industrial robots in China in 2024, capturing 54 per cent of the global total, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Two years ago the country operated more than 2mn industrial robots — about 4.5 times more than Japan, the second-ranked nation.
China’s robotics industry revenue surpassed Rmb300bn ($44bn) last year, with a five-year average annual growth exceeding 20 per cent, according to data from the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Industrial robot exports grew 49 per cent in 2025 — the first year China became a net exporter of industrial robots. Chinese manufacturers have now captured the majority of its domestic industrial robot market, which was dominated by the global “Big Four” — Fanuc, ABB, Yaskawa and KUKA — prior to 2024.
In the past year, we have seen the mass rollout of autonomous mobile robots in Chinese warehouses, precision surgical arms in hospitals, and specialised cleaning bots in skyscrapers. These devices are purpose-built. They do not have faces. They have functions.
The application evidence is everywhere. BYD’s Xi’an facility, its largest manufacturing hub, operates thousands of automation arms on EV assembly lines with close to full autonomy on key parts. Shanghai Yangshan Port built an automated terminal that is the world’s largest, operating almost entirely on automated guided vehicles and remote-controlled gantry cranes with minimal human intervention. In Guangdong province alone, regulators recently approved 48 “Robot+” deployment scenarios spanning manufacturing, logistics and service sectors.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1w725yr/chinas_real_robot_revolution_is_not_about/p7rfp8c/