Shaping the future of robotics

The Chinese New Year special television show, Spring Festival Gala – which is broadcast to viewers around the world on Lunar New Year’s Eve – has long been an important stage for showcasing Chinese culture. The 2025 gala introduced something innovative in the form of a performance by 16 humanoid robots performing Chinese folk dancing. The Yang Bot performance attracted interest from around the world, with the global media marvelling at the evolution of these robots with human characteristics. 

Keeping pace with the broader technological innovation in China, the School of Mechanical Engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in China is at the forefront of robotics. Researchers at the school have developed a series of humanoid robots, called Chucai, in collaboration with leading industry partners. 

The different types of robots in the series are called Jingchu, Shennong and Laborer. Jingchu robots imitate human features using a 3D facial scanning and modelling technology. They have highly sensitive electronic skin and a bionic head. The robots can not only show expressions such as smiles, sadness and blinking but also achieve multi-modal perceptions such as vision, hearing and touch. 

The Shennong model of robot has a motion-control algorithm that can adapt its walking to a variety of different floor types. With their human characteristics, the Jingchu and Shennong models are suitable for roles in medical care, such as distribution, sorting medicines, carrying medical equipment or accompanying healthcare providers in wards. 

With strong arms and bionic joints that can lift heavy objects, the Laborer robot series has the ability to carry heavy loads. It has world-class load-bearing strength and dynamic control capabilities, alongside an intelligent brain and the ability to walk with heavy loads. Designed to address operation and maintenance challenges at remote substations, it is expected to go into substation inspection for pilot application.

Han Ding, professor at HUST’s Institute of Robotics, says one of the challenges of developing the robots was overcoming the technical problems involved in enabling them to walk independently with linear joints. He added that the university’s achievements in developing humanoid robots are a multidisciplinary effort and that several disciplines worked together to overcome these technical difficulties.

Bo Tao, vice-dean of the School of Mechanical Engineering at HUST, says it was crucial to work with companies so that the algorithm could be successful. “There is a shortage of components such as linear joint actuators in China and there are currently no mature control algorithm solutions,” he says. “We sought out companies to collaborate on manufacturing and brought together students from relevant disciplines and majors at our university to implement this algorithm in just over a month.”

Through its multidisciplinary work and collaboration with businesses, HUST is injecting new energy into many industries, supporting China’s engineering ambitions to reach new heights. 

From global leadership in multimodal large language models to the breakthroughs in the development of humanoid robots, the university advances the frontiers of AI and robotics to drive innovation that will shape the future of technology and society. 

Find out more about the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.