The "New Workers" in the Factory

Step Electric recently deployed a humanoid robot at Haier's Chongqing refrigerator factory.

Haier gained a controlling stake in Step Electric in early 2025, and since then, cooperation between the two companies in the field of robotics has gradually deepened. Haier has over 160 factories worldwide, and this Chongqing factory's level of automation is in the middle range. Haier started with the refrigerator business, and the production line at the Chongqing factory is complex enough.

"Our core focus is on two things: achieving an upgrade in robot control technology to meet the needs of real factory scenarios, and collecting industrial data so that we have the foundational data to train the new generation of robots during mass production," Liu Changwen said in a recent exclusive interview with Yicai during the Industrial Fair. He stated that Step Electric basically aims to complete the industrial certification of mass-produced robots by the end of this year.

At the 2025 Yunqi Conference on September 25, Cai Zhihao, Deputy General Manager of Puxi Robotics, told Yicai that the company has already shipped 200 robots, 60% of which are wheeled and 40% are bipedal. "Wheeled robots are mostly used in industrial scenarios, while bipedal robots are for clients who need them for exhibition halls, providing讲解 services there."

Puxi Robotics is a joint venture established by Junpu Robotics Research Institute and Zhiyuan Robotics. At the Yunqi Conference, Junpu Intelligent's (688306.SH) robot family made its first collective appearance, including Jarvis 2.0, the wheeled robot Wally for industrial scenarios, the humanoid robot Expedition A2 developed by Zhiyuan and produced by Puxi, and the small robot Lebao X2.

Based on Puxi's development experience, the development cost of bipedal robots is significantly higher. The development difficulty of bipedal robots is inherently much greater than that of wheeled robots. Furthermore, bipedal robots require more degrees of freedom, which in turn requires more sensors. The amount of data needed to train bipedal robots is also much larger than for wheeled ones. In comparison, the chassis technology required for wheeled robots is already mature, making their direct application cost considerably lower than for bipedal robots.

In the view of Deng Yang, Director of the Engineering Department at Fuling Precision Industry, material handling is the best entry point for deploying this batch of robots in factories. In specific scenarios, Zhiyuan's robots can already operate for several hours with zero errors. The challenge in deploying humanoid robots in factories lies in adapting to different operational site environments.