Humanoid robots from China start working at Turkish home-appliance giant Beko’s plant
Humankind is entering an era where machines are not merely replacing physical labour but are also taking on tasks that demand fine coordination and a degree of “intelligence”. The question is no longer whether robots will replace people, but how exactly humans and robots can complement each other to improve quality and safety at work. Chinese innovations from Ningbo are now providing one of the answers to this challenge.
At the plant of Turkish home-appliance giant Beko, humanoid robots from the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre in Ningbo have been appointed as quality inspectors. They are capable of opening refrigerator doors, scanning and checking their internal contents. According to the innovation centre, the robots are attracting growing interest from manufacturers like Beko precisely because of their versatile capabilities.
“We have built a fairly extensive product portfolio that allows us to promote robot applications across various sectors,” said Xiong Rong, founder and chief scientist of the innovation centre.
At Hannover Messe 2026, the world’s leading industrial technology fair held in Germany, the centre, together with Schneider Electric, unveiled a wheeled-arm humanoid robot that combines a mobile wheeled base with a humanoid upper torso fitted with actuated manipulators. The robot is able to precisely handle a pipette, performing the entire process – including sampling, analysis and cleaning – with a success rate of up to 99.99%. This capability drew significant attention from numerous visitors.
“This year, we also fulfilled an order from a major global logistics company to help them organise container transport and sorting between different racks. We also have products used for solution preparation in the biopharmaceutical sector,” added Xiong.
Ningbo has long been a key industrial hub in China, and the Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre established there has been operating since 2020 with support from provincial and state programmes. In China, robotics is a priority under the “Made in China 2025” strategy, and over the past three years, the domestic industrial robot market has nearly doubled in size. The models presented at Hannover Messe have already been tested at several European factories, and collaboration with Schneider Electric is paving the way for integrating such systems into smart manufacturing ecosystems.
As CCTV+ reports, the deployment of humanoid robots at major global production facilities confirms the growing demand for high-tech solutions and the openness of Chinese developers to international cooperation. In the coming years, similar applications are expected to expand in automotive manufacturing, electronics and the medical industry.
