Healthy Loong makes debut at Shanghai conference

Healthy Loong, a full-size general-purpose humanoid robot, made its debut at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2024 in Shanghai.

With a height of 185cm and a weight of 82kg, the robot was developed by Humanoid Robot (Shanghai).

Healthy Loong has a highly bionic torso configuration and anthropomorphic motion control, with up to 43 active degrees of freedom in its whole body.

It can walk quickly, navigate obstacles with agility, ascend and descend slopes steadily, and resist shock interference.

"Intelligent manufacturing stands as a key arena for full-size humanoid robots, utilizing them for tasks like soft material handling during vehicle assembly. Moreover, they can replace humans in performing hazardous operations," said Xing Boyang, research and development director.

He said it plans to build 100 scenarios for humanoid robot training and data collection next year, and 1,000-plus by 2027.

China's humanoid robot market is set to grow to 2.76 billion yuan (US$380 million) in 2024, and skyrocket to 75 billion yuan by 2029, accounting for 32.7 percent of the world's total. By 2035, it is set to reach 300 billion yuan, according to a report released at the first China Humanoid Robot Industry Conference in April.

To fuel the booming development, Humanoid Robot (Shanghai) was assigned as the National and Local Co-Built Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center in May 2024.

It is located in Pudong, site of China's first pioneering zone of AI's innovative applications.

The market size of the robot industry in Pudong has exceeded 20 billion yuan. Last year, China released 12 humanoid robots, four of which were developed in Pudong, according to the Pudong Science Technology and Economy Commission.

The commission said Pudong plans to set up a humanoid robot industry fund with a size of tens of billions yuan to bolster the growth of top-tier, high-quality, and promising companies across the industry chain.