Humanoid robots in China have completed a six day shift on a live factory production line with a near-perfect success rate.
The robots, built by Shanghai-based startup Agibot, performed quality control inspections and handled materials for more than 64 hours at a factory in Nanchang in eastern China.
The entire operation was live streamed, showing the completion of more than 60,000 production line tasks with a success rate of 99.99 per cent.
“The key question for humanoid robotics is no longer what a robot can demonstrate, but whether it can be deployed, integrated, and create value in real operating environments,” said Dr Yao Maoqing, a senior vice president at Agibot.
“By bringing multiple humanoid robots into a real production line and making the process visible over six consecutive days, we wanted to provide a more transparent answer to what embodied AI industrialisation actually requires.”
The Shanghai-based startup also announced that it has now built more than 15,000 robots, marking a significant milestone towards deploying real-world robots at scale.
China’s latest Five-Year Plan, from 2026 to 2030, prioritised humanoid robots as one of the top 10 strategic industries for economic growth.
It marks a pivot towards embodied AI, where humanoids are equipped with powerful chips that allow them to perform tasks well beyond the realm of standard industrial robots.
“Under the new framework, China is shifting its focus from traditional industrial automation to high-end, intelligence robotics integrated with artificial intelligence,” said Takayuki Ito, president of the International Federation of Robotics.
Analysts from Barclays forecast that China will deploy 11 million humanoid robots by 2035, far outpacing the 2 million units projected for the rest of the world.
Separate analysis from Morgan Stanley found that China sold just 12,000 humanoids last year, meaning expectations may well exceed reality.
Following the six-day live stream of its factory robots, Agibot claimed that it had successfully demonstrated the commercial value of humanoid machines, marking a shift from laboratory testing into real-world applications.
“The industry is entering a new phase,” the company said in a statement.
“It shows that embodied AI is beginning to be tested in a more transparent way, closer to the conditions that industrial customers actually care about.
“It also signals that the general-purpose robot ecosystem is moving from vision toward real-world implementation.”
