China’s humanoid robot makers pivot from ‘body’ to ‘brain’ as commercial race heats up

South China Morning PostCenter-RightEN 1 min read 100% complete by Iris DengFebruary 6, 2026 at 02:15 AM
China’s humanoid robot makers pivot from ‘body’ to ‘brain’ as commercial race heats up

AI Summary

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Chinese humanoid robotics companies like Dobot and UBTech are increasingly focusing on developing intelligent models, or "brains," for their robots as the commercial race intensifies. Dobot announced the delivery of its third batch of mass-produced Atom robots, highlighting its self-developed Dobot-VLA model that enables the robot to autonomously adapt to real-world uncertainties. This model allows Atom to understand instructions and make decisions to complete tasks. Similarly, UBTech recently open-sourced Thinker, its large-scale multimodal model designed to address issues like lag and spatial inaccuracy in humanoid robots. These advancements signal a shift towards creating robots capable of more than just pre-programmed actions, aiming for practical applications in industrial settings. Investors are closely watching these developments in robot intelligence as the next step toward widespread commercial use.

Keywords

humanoid robots 100% robot brains 80% intelligent models 70% vision-language-action model 60% commercial use 60% large-scale multimodal model 50% industrial applications 50% autonomous decisions 50% ubtech 40% dobot 40%

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Source
South China Morning Post
Political Lean
Center-Right (0.50)
Far LeftCenterFar Right
Classification Confidence
90%
Geographic Perspective
China

This article was automatically classified using rule-based analysis. The political bias score ranges from -1 (far left) to +1 (far right).

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