I spent a day at a robot “carnival” in Shanghai. Here’s what I saw.
MIT Technology Review You Xiaoying
Shanghai held a robot carnival where kids played with humanoids and robot pets. It’s a flashy sign China’s betting big on robots people can see, not just read about.
Based on reporting by MIT Technology Review, You Xiaoying — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
On a public holiday in Shanghai, a robot carnival turned an R&D center on the city’s outskirts into a kind of showroom with applause. Families packed in to watch humanoids, robotic dogs and machine arms perform tricks, while kids treated the place less like a tech demo and more like a fairground. One 11-year-old was so taken with a mini robotic dog that he kept showing off its stunts to strangers.
The setting matters. The hub hosting the event is home to more than 100 companies that research, develop, manufacture and market robotic technologies and equipment. Some of them build serious industrial machines for jobs like hauling heavy loads or checking sewage pipes. But on this day the emphasis was on spectacle: a quadrupedal robot climbing stairs, remote-controlled bots firing water beads at each other, and a staffer calling that duel a draw.
China is pushing humanoids hard, and not just in Shanghai. The country’s latest five-year plan treats embodied AI — bringing artificial intelligence into physical systems — as part of a bigger national strategy. And the numbers are hard to ignore: nearly 90% of the more than 13,000 two-armed, two-legged robots delivered worldwide last year were made in China.
The pitch from companies is simple. Humanoids, says Yang Duan, a product manager at DexForce, can free people from physical work and routine chores. At the carnival, DexForce showed a model that can make coffee, while nearby robotic arms tried folding T-shirts. Elsewhere in China, shopping malls and tourist spots are already hosting humanoids that perform for crowds, and in Beijing bipedal robots are running half-marathons.
There are still real limits. Humanoids elsewhere have moved slowly because they’re heavy, hard to balance and expensive, with short battery life. Plenty of roboticists still doubt the human shape is the right one. But in Shanghai, that skepticism got drowned out by showmanship: drunken boxing, a front flip, and a row of small robotic lions waiting for their turn under the main tent.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
China gets one thing right here: people trust what they can kick, clap at, and buy a toy version of. The rest of the world keeps filing humanoids under “future problem,” while China is turning them into weekend entertainment and industrial bragging rights. That’s how standards get set — not in slide decks, but in public with children yelling for more.
Read more about this at: MIT Technology Review