China robot makers show off latest humanoids as tech event draws surprise visit from Nvidia CEOs daughter
Chinese robot makers showed off humanoids sorting parcels, packing mobile phones and helping with household chores at a Beijing conference on Wednesday, seeking to demonstrate a shift from crowd-pleasing displays to broader commercial use.More than 300 mostly domestic companies are attending the World Robot Conference, which runs through Sunday, displaying over 2,000 exhibits and launching more than 150 products, according to organizers.The event comes amid a surge of investor interest in humanoids, a potential new source of industrial growth for China and an arena of technological competition with the United States.Shares in Unitree, China’s best-known humanoid robot maker, soared nearly sixfold in their Shanghai trading debut on Wednesday, after Unitree’s initial public offering was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors.Following Unitree’s IPO, startup Lumos Robotics and the robotics division of China’s largest auto exporter Chery Automobile told Reuters they were also considering stock market listings.Madison Huang, a senior Nvidia executive and daughter of the US chipmaker’s CEO Jensen Huang, made an unannounced visit to the event, watching robots perform flying kicks and dance routines before stopping at a companion-robot booth to ask about its sensors.Huang, who drew onlookers much as her father has on past visits to Beijing, oversees marketing for Nvidia’s Omniverse and robotics platforms, software used to simulate and test physical AI — systems that can perceive and act in the real world.Despite geopolitical tensions and US restrictions on exports of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips to China, her visit highlighted foreign suppliers’ role in China’s push to develop intelligent and autonomous robots for its factories, warehouses and homes.RealSense, a US-based maker of vision systems for robots and one of the few foreign exhibitors at the conference, said it was expanding manufacturing capacity and building s...