Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi unveiled its humanoid robot at the World Humanoid Conference held in Beijing in August 2026.
Evelyn Chen | CNBC
BEIJING — The big challenge for humanoid robots remains making the technology work, according to industry leaders speaking on the sidelines of the World Robotics Conference in Beijing this week.
Robots are still not as efficient as humans and take time to learn new skills, which is a bottleneck for the industry, Unitree founder Wang Xingxing said at a conference a day after the company’s IPO date soared 460%. His remarks highlighted the challenges of humanoid robots entering the human workforce. Unitree’s stock price fell 18.7% on Thursday.
Last month, the Federal Communications Commission added foreign-made advanced robotics equipment, including humanoid robots, to a list that restricts imports into the United States. The statement did not specify any countries and said retailers could continue to import models previously approved by the FCC.
But because there aren’t that many humanoid robots in use in the U.S., the impact of that restriction isn’t that big right now, Jeff Bernstein, president of the Association for the Advancement of Automation, told CNBC.
“The potential impact in the U.S. is on autonomous mobile robots, which are used in far more factories than humanoid robots,” he said.
Given the current state of technology, companies that are deploying robots to increase efficiency aren’t even focusing on humanoids at this point.
“What we’re hearing from our U.S. customers is, ‘We need a solution. We have a problem. We need a solution. We don’t care if it’s a humanoid. We don’t care if it’s a traditional robot or a cobot. We don’t even care if it’s a robot. We need a solution,'” Bernstein said.
“So the onus is on the humanoid players to show that we have the solution,” he said, noting that robots need to be affordable, safe and ready to use.
Startup Keenon is developing humanoids to be used in conjunction with simpler delivery robots, for example to handle hotel laundry services, said COO Wan Bin. Keenon’s business partners include Buffalo Wild Wings and Hilton.
Successfully completing 50% of the tasks is relatively easy, he said, and even 80% is possible. But achieving a 99.9% completion rate is a real test of engineering and training ability, Wang said.
He said the company has shipped more than 100,000 robots so far and expects to have more than 150,000 by the end of next year.
