The embodied AI exhibition area was the most bustling spot at this year's World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) – with hundreds of robots brought by over 200 companies, the focus was no longer on flashy backflips or parkour. The unified standard for evaluation became: can it work a full 8-hour shift on a real production line?
This industry is in its early stages. Everyone sees demos everywhere, but when it comes to actual work, clients are often left frustrated. The inability to sustain performance beyond a demo is the real issue we see in the industry," stated Chen Xi, co-founder of GEEKPLUS-W and CEO of GEEKPLUS Embodied AI Technology Co., Ltd., in a candid interview.
This statement almost captures the overall ethos of the embodied AI zone at this WAIC – the industry has fully transitioned from the technical validation phase of 'can it move?' to the industrial delivery phase of 'can it get the job done?'
From Demos to Real Work
At the GEEKPLUS booth, a wheeled humanoid robot named Gino 1 was quietly picking up potato chips, transparently packaged bread, and small rubber bowls from a bin one by one, accurately placing them into corresponding positions. The movements were not particularly dazzling, even appearing somewhat 'mundane' – but this 'mundaneness' is precisely the most stringent acceptance criterion for industrial scenarios.
During the conference, GEEKPLUS unveiled a unified embodied AI framework named "Gravity," which employs a core "dual-brain collaboration" architecture. The "cognitive brain" is responsible for understanding complex instructions and breaking down tasks, while the "action brain" conducts physical "sandbox simulations" before acting. Gravity 4D shifts robots from "predicting visuals" to "anticipating physics," raising zero-shot success rates on the public LIBERO-Plus benchmark from 73.73% to 78.62%.
GEEKPLUS also revealed its "one-core, dual-engine" strategy. Chen Xi defines warehouse order picking as the "training bullseye for physical AI," as it combines five conditions: high frequency, real-world application, clear feedback, transferability, and proximity to a commercial closed loop. "In warehouses, there are millions of SKUs. We can train the brain well and refine the hardware's grasping capability. This ability can then be seamlessly transferred to commercial and everyday life scenarios."
Machines for Extreme Environments
NetEase Lingdong, the embodied AI brand under NetEase focused on the engineering machinery sector, has set its sights on more extreme environments. Upon entering their exhibition area, the most eye-catching feature was the "intelligent cockpit" – where visitors could immersively observe staff remotely operating real equipment at power plants and ports from thousands of miles away.
"If the main theme of AI over the past five years was 'digital intelligence' – enabling machines to see, hear, speak, and draw – then the key proposition for the next five years is 'physical intelligence,' enabling machines to perceive, make decisions, and act in the real world," a representative from NetEase Lingdong stated. "What we aim to do is to send machines to places where humans cannot or dare not go, generating real industrial value."
NetEase Lingdong showcased three original industrial models on-site. In the "human-robot mixed operation" mode, an operator can manually drive one machine while remotely supervising another, achieving double the efficiency with "one person, two machines." The "Shepherd" mode allows one operator to simultaneously supervise multiple unmanned devices, requiring human intervention only under special working conditions. The "lights-out worksite" solution enables robots to autonomously complete the entire process of loading, transferring, stacking, and feeding materials without external lighting, achieving practical data showing 120% of a skilled worker's comprehensive efficiency, a 15% reduction in overall energy consumption, and a 70% decrease in manpower load per site.
Showcasing Industrial Maturity
At this conference, Zhishen Technology made its debut with a complete product portfolio, marking the transition from an industrial inflection point with cumulative production exceeding 15,000 units to the launch of a full new product matrix. This was not merely a list of new products but a concentrated expression of a strategic logic.
According to booth staff, the Zhishen Gangbeng L2 integrates project deployment capabilities into standard products upfront. Its industry-first GLUE omnidirectional autonomous following and standardized interfaces allow end-users to acquire productivity tools at lower deployment costs. The explosion-proof quadruped inspection robot Zhishen Qianqiu SP1 targets high-risk environments like petrochemical plants and energy stations. The new humanoid robot Zhishen Yinyi NE01 signifies the further refinement of its embodied AI product portfolio. On another side of the booth, the CHAMP champion series high-power-density integrated joint modules demonstrated an annual production capacity in the millions – indicating Zhishen Technology is not only "building its own robots" but also supplying core power components to the entire industry.
The Era of Deployment Begins
Zhiyuan Robotics showcased its full product series and multiple deployed scenarios at WAIC 2026. Among them, the deployed scenario in collaboration with JD Logistics featuring the Genie G2 Max was presented in a real setting – marking the first deployment of a humanoid robot in an actual warehousing and production operation scene. The G2 Max has a single-arm payload of 18kg, a standard dual-arm payload of 38kg, peaking at 50kg. Equipped with the Genie Studio 2.0 intelligent operation platform, it supports rapid deployment in terms of "days," and its dual-battery hot-swap capability ensures 24/7 uninterrupted operation.
More symbolically, Zhiyuan, in partnership with Qingtianzu, provided 60 various types of embodied AI robots for public services at the conference. These robots undertook tasks like guiding attendees in the main venue and two sub-venues' core public areas, forming a mobile service network covering the entire event – the industry's first implementation of "deployed state" public service for embodied AI.
The Zhiyuan GO-2 embodied base model innovatively proposes an Action Chain-of-Thought and an asynchronous dual-system, bridging planning and execution. The world model GE-2 topped the overall score in the 2026 World Arena world model track. The Genie Evolver 1.0 closed-loop real-machine reinforcement learning system drives continuous robot evolution through practice. The Yuanzheng A3 Ultra, equipped with a 700 TOPS embodied processor, was selected as one of WAIC's "Treasures of the Pavilion."
One Brain, Multiple Machines
The "Robot Smart Pharmacy" jointly created by Ant Lingbo, under Ant Group, and Guoda Pharmacy was selected as one of the top ten "Treasures of the Pavilion." Three robots from different brands with varying configurations – Leju, Xinghaitu, and the Ant Lingbo self-developed R-2 – are driven by the same embodied base model, LingBot-VLA 2.0. They autonomously divide tasks based on random orders, completing the process from receiving an order to packaging medicine in just 90 seconds.
This model incorporated 60,000 hours of high-quality real data during pre-training and has been adapted to over 20 robot configurations from 17 manufacturers. Notably, this solution is already in actual operation at a Guoda Pharmacy store in Shanghai, requiring no store modifications as the robots can directly enter the existing business environment.
Converging Technologies
Yanshan Technology showcased its five major business segments, centered around two main lines: "brain-computer interface + physical AI." Yansi Neuromorphic's self-developed next-generation brain-controlled game interaction system allows players to command game characters via brain signals without physical operation, drawing crowds during its mind-control demonstration for "Black Myth: Wukong."
Its LumiSleep real-time EEG sleep regulator launched pre-sales, marking the first introduction of millisecond-level real-time closed-loop EEG regulation technology into consumer sleep scenarios. Nullmax announced a strategic upgrade from intelligent driving to embodied agents, developing a self-developed physical AI brain capable of "one brain, multiple bodies; one brain, multiple capabilities." The same intelligent system can adapt to wheeled chassis and legged robots.
From Ant Lingbo's "one brain, multiple machines" to GEEKPLUS's "think clearly before acting," from Zhishen Technology's ten-thousand-unit production scale to Zhiyuan's 60 robots serving the conference, the message from the embodied AI exhibition area is clear and consistent: 2026 marks the "first year of industrialization" for embodied AI, transitioning from demos to deployment. As Chen Xi stated, "The value of embodied intelligence must ultimately be realized at the customer's site."
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