_________

Published on Feb. 06, 2026

"We do not need a million dancing humanoid robots!" With this headline, the Chinese technology portal Tencent Tech recently introduced a report on the development of robotics(in Chinese).

Many observers, even in technology-enthusiastic China, are gradually becoming weary of seeing more and more dancing, kung fu-fighting and flip-flop-jumping humanoids on every channel.

If humanoid robots "are still just dancing and monkeying around in 2026", then that would be a dead end, the portal quoted an investor as saying.

The question of when these two-legged machines will finally be put to "real work" is being asked increasingly often.

That is, however, precisely what has just begun. At CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, humanoids of the brand "Little Mo" (Xiaomo) have been in operation in a factory in Zhongzhou, near Luoyang in Henan Province, since December.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, these are "smart robots" that are no longer programmed solely for very simple and repetitive tasks.

Instead, "Little Mo" with its sensors and AI algorithms can perform tasks that would normally require skilled CATL workers. The humanoid carries out so-called "end-of-line" or EOL tests of battery packs, as well as DCR measurements.

Such work is not only relatively complex but also dangerous for human employees. Occasionally, they die from electric shocks.

In other factories across China, first groups of humanoids are also gradually showing up on production lines, including in a washing machine plant operated by Midea in Jingzhou.

There, the two-legged robots cooperate with 14 AI agents that control all major processes, orchestrated by a central computer. The humanoids are deployed for DMS, TPM, EHS and in quality assurance.

They work side by side with cobots in the washing machine factory, which still outnumber them.

"China’s robotics industry reached a historic turning point last year," wrote the stock market newspaper of China’s Star Market, the "Kechuangban Ribao”.

The humanoids have just evolved from "laboratory demonstration objects" to tools participating in factory production, the paper wrote.

In other words, humanoid robot technology is currently undergoing a phase of validation through industrial deployment.

A look at humanoid sales figures shows that this validation has only just begun. Only 13,317 humanoid robots were delivered worldwide in 2025, Tencent Tech quoted from a report published by the British market research agency Omdia.

Most of them come from China. According to this statistic, Zhiyuan Robot (AgiBot) sold 5,168 units in 2025, Unitree Robotics 4,200, and UBTECH around 1,000. All other robotics companies listed delivered fewer than a thousand units. Omdia recorded 150 humanoids sold by Tesla last year.

Some of these figures are disputed by the companies involved. The disagreement concerns who sold slightly more or less. However, no one claims to have delivered more than a few thousand humanoids to customers in 2025.

"Most companies producing humanoid robots still need to deliver relevant production capacities," commented Tencent Tech. These are still far from reaching the scale of industrial robots.

So it is the cobots and all their relatives that continue to diligently conduct most work on factory floors around the world, while humanoids mostly dance on television and TikTok, entertaining viewers with flip-flops.

Complete figures for 2025 are not yet available for industrial robots, but an estimate by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) in Frankfurt suggests that there were around 575,000 installations worldwide last year.

Most analysts, including those in China, now predict explosive growth for the humanoid segment.

The commercial scaling, both in industry and in the consumer market for so-called "companion robots" or "service robots" (for example at reception desks or in restaurants), has only just begun and is expected to accelerate rapidly from now on.

At the end of January, Morgan Stanley doubled its forecast for humanoid sales this year from 14,000 to 28,000 units. For 2035, Omdia predicts global sales of 2.6 million humanoids.

What we are witnessing is a very young industry. The humanoids of our time resemble children who dance and play before the seriousness of life catches up with them. Soon, however, many of them will probably have to work hard in manufacturing.