Who on earth is buying the robots at WRC!
Written by | LIU Sijie, LIU Ziyan, LIU Chenyi
Edited by | ZHANG Wei
Cover design by | QU Mei
When making popcorn or serving ice cream, the robot occasionally makes mistakes, but that's okay as there are staff members nearby to offer assistance.
At the site of the World Robot Conference, the humanoid robot from Exdimensional Intelligence shows off its capabilities in a simulated convenience store scenario.
This robot went on sale last September. It sold poorly in the early stage, and sales did not improve until hardware iteration and cost reduction. Currently, the total shipment volume has exceeded 30 units. Buyers include scenic spot convenience stores and government-run data collection centers. These robots are used to collect real-machine operation data, and the collected data is used for post-training of models.
Like the robots of Exdimensional Intelligence, most of the robots exhibited at WRC do not yet have a stable and sustainable large-scale buyer, and their main demand does not come from the households and factories that the general public expects. Not only humanoid robots, but also buyers of robots in the form of robotic dogs are in the stage of gradual verification.
A wheel-legged robot from Bento Tech is equipped with a delivery box. At present, this robotic dog-like product is the result of cooperation with JD, designed to try to complete the "last mile" of express delivery.
The "robotic dog" from Bento Tech
Logistics is only one of the application scenarios it is testing. Among the delivered buyers, power companies purchase it to accompany power workers into mountains for inspection, where it carries heavy loads; tunnel construction parties install sensors on it to detect the gas content inside the tunnel. A salesperson from Bento Tech also traveled to Aksu, Xinjiang, to meet a client who owns thousands of acres of apple orchards. The client is troubled by the shortage of picking labor when apples ripen, and hopes to enable the wheel-legged robot to pick apples through secondary development. Another high-value client is a military enterprise, which purchased six units at one time and signed annual reservation contracts for subsequent years.
According to data from Counterpoint Research, global shipments of humanoid robots exceeded 22,000 units in the first half of 2026, a year-on-year increase of nearly 300%. Unitree, Xiaomi, Galaxy Universal, Ubtech, and Lepu ranked in the top five, all of which are Chinese manufacturers. In terms of application structure, entertainment performance and data production research together still account for more than 60% of shipments, service guidance accounts for about 19%, and intelligent manufacturing and warehousing logistics account for about 13% and 5% respectively.
Robots are starting to be shipped, but it is still too early to talk about "replacing humans" now.
They are more like being taken by different buyers to verify different purposes: training models, replacing part of manual work, attracting traffic, or just bringing a little sense of novelty.
"Visible Intelligence" in Public Service Places
According to Unitree's prospectus, from January to September 2025, 73.60% of Unitree's humanoid robot revenue came from scientific research and education, 17.39% from commercial consumption, and only 9.01% from industrial applications. What do these data mean? Humanoid robots are not only far from the daily life of ordinary people, but also still a certain distance away from large-scale implementation in actual factories.
In fact, the first buyers of robots are from inside the industry.
A staff member at the Unitree robot booth mentioned a type of intra-industry buyer, which are institutions and companies engaged in algorithm development. "After the algorithm is developed, you need a powerful hardware to verify whether it works well. If the verification is successful on Unitree's robot, it can prove that the algorithm itself is indeed feasible."
Within the industry, data collection centers are also a type of real buyer.
A staff member from Lepu Intelligence introduced that the company's largest order last year was worth about 80 to 90 million yuan, coming from a robot training ground that purchased robots for data collection. Staff from Exdimensional Intelligence also mentioned that data collection centers of some local governments will purchase robots to collect real-machine operation data, train models, and then deploy the models to more robots.
Of course, more intra-industry demands come from secondary development.
The form of Bento Tech's product with a delivery box in cooperation with JD is only one of their current display solutions. "It is not a logistics-specific robotic dog by nature, but a detachable modular robot." In actual delivery, customers will continue to modify it according to their own scenarios. There are downstream companies that specialize in secondary development. After purchasing the robot body, they add modules such as cameras, sensors, and face recognition, and then sell them to end customers in public security, chemical, and tunnel industries.
Governments and public sectors constitute one of the most stable buyers of various types of robots.
At the booth of Songyan Dynamics, a row of half-body bionic robots with exquisite makeup and different hair colors blink at the audience from time to time. This is the bionic humanoid robot X-Head1 launched by Songyan Dynamics, which has been mass-produced and sold 100 to 200 units in the past year. It is currently mainly used in public service scenarios such as museums, science and technology museums, enterprise exhibition halls, government service halls, social security halls, airports, and high-speed railway stations, undertaking work such as tour guiding, explanation, consultation and reception. According to the staff of Songyan Dynamics, a recent large order came from a steel group, whose multiple factory exhibition halls purchased bionic robots to replace manual work for explanation and reception.
The half-body bionic robot from Songyan Dynamics
Public health cleaning follows a similar logic. Heshou Thinking exhibited a commercial bathroom cleaning robot with a unit price of about 200,000 to 250,000 yuan, mainly targeting government customers, as well as enterprise and overseas customers. The staff said that as of June this year, the company's sales revenue had reached 100 million yuan, with about 400 to 500 units sold. This robot has a chassis plus a robotic arm structure, and the body is equipped with blowing, water spraying, water absorbing, scraper and a patented mop head device, which can clean urinals, toilets, countertops and floors. In Beijing, the robots have been put into work in Haidian Park and the speed skating rink of the Olympic Village, which can replace 70% of the work of human cleaners. Of course, work like putting on garbage bags still requires the cooperation of human workers.
The cleaning robot from Heshou Thinking
More than 30 bionic robots produced by a robot company under Chery Automobile have been placed on roads across the country, wearing reflective vests for traffic police on duty to direct traffic. Another three units are equipped with an automatic registration machine on their chests, providing consultation services for patients in several local hospitals in Wuhu.
In public service scenarios, robots do not need to completely replace humans, nor do they have to independently complete complex tasks. As long as they can undertake part of repetitive inquiries, tour guiding and reception, cleaning and inspection, or provide a kind of "visible intelligence" in spaces such as government service halls, hospitals, scenic spots, and exhibition halls, it may become a reasonable procurement.
What Are Massively Deployed in Factories Are Not Humanoid Robots
But when robots enter factories, the evaluation criteria they need to face become different. Factories care about whether a robot can stably and continuously complete a clear and repetitive task.
If this is the standard, then humanoid robots are definitely not the best answer at present.
Current factories are actually one of the earliest and most mature application scenarios for robots, but they are not "humanoid". On manufacturing production lines such as automobiles, 3C, lithium batteries, and photovoltaics, industrial robotic arms, collaborative robots, AGV/AMR, and visual inspection equipment have long undertaken work such as welding, handling, sorting, palletizing, inspection, and loading and unloading. They do not look "human", but they work stably, and their input-output ratio is easy to calculate.
At the WRC site, a staff member from Rokae Robotics introduced to me that Rokae sold about 15,000 robotic arms throughout last year, and another 15,000 units in the first half of this year, with prices ranging from 50,000 to 500,000 yuan, depending on configuration and scenarios. Their customers cover automobile factories, humanoid robot manufacturers and so on. "As long as there is a place with manual production, robotic arms can actually be applied."
Franka Emika also takes robotic arms as its core product. According to the staff, since 2024, Franka has produced customized arms for various manufacturers, with more than 2,000 units deployed. At this exhibition, Franka launched a general-purpose robotic arm priced at 23,800 yuan, mainly targeting large model and software/hardware companies, supporting secondary development. The recent largest order came from Jack Technology, which purchased more than 2,000 robotic arms to build sewing robots. In addition to industrial scenarios, Franka's robotic arms have also been deployed in commercial scenarios such as coffee making, ice cream serving, and photography.
These figures are in sharp contrast to humanoid robots. Counterpoint data shows that the total global shipment of humanoid robots in the first half of 2026 is only 22,000 units. It can be seen that in mature industrial scenarios, robotic arms and collaborative robots are still the more practical main force.
Factories buy robots to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure safety. If robotic arms or automation equipment can complete the tasks, there is no need to pay for humanoid robots that are more complex, expensive, and difficult to maintain.
This is why many humanoid robot companies are still in the stage of exploring and verifying specific stations when talking about "entering factories". At present, when humanoid robots enter factories, they are competing with existing automation solutions such as mature robotic arms, collaborative robots, AGV/AMR, and visual inspection systems.
Cultural Tourism Scenarios: Attracting Traffic by Robots
But in cultural tourism scenarios, the "human-like" feature of robots has become a good way to attract customers and traffic.
The tolerance for errors of robots in cultural tourism scenarios is also higher. After all, when a robot makes popcorn or ice cream at a snack stall in a scenic spot, even if it moves a little slower or makes occasional mistakes, tourists are more likely to regard it as a novel experience.
In front of a booth of simulated humanoid tour guide robots, the staff repeatedly mentioned to me that the role of their robots is to "attract traffic". The products are mainly for science and technology museums, museums, libraries, children's palaces, scenic spots, airports, and convention and exhibition centers. The unit terminal price is about 150,000 to 180,000 yuan, and the price can be tens of thousands of yuan lower for direct procurement. The robot walks with a tray at the bottom, and there is a camera in its eye, which can take the initiative to greet people when it sees them. Customers can upload scenic spot materials in the background, so that the robot can complete tour guiding and explanation work for tourists.
The staff said that they have already provided services for Overseas Chinese Town and Yuanmingyuan Scenic Area, and have also contacted customers such as Guangxi Cultural Tourism and Xinjiang Cultural Tourism. Some popular hot pot restaurants, string restaurants, clothing stores, and shoe and hat stores also rent this type of robot at a rent of about 10,000 yuan per month. Its purpose is not complicated: stand at the door to attract people, take photos with tourists, and then the photos are uploaded to WeChat Moments and family groups, where the scenic spot landmarks and brand logos in the photos are promoted.
"This thing naturally guides people to the entrance of your street, and everyone likes to post on WeChat Moments," the staff said. "People will ask, where is this? This is