At the 2026 Lean Digital Innovation Conference held from September 5-7 at the Tianjin National Exhibition Center, Li Chao, General Manager of the Industry Division at Unitree Technology, delivered a keynote address on the company's strategic push into industrial applications. He emphasized that humanoid robots represent Unitree's key solution for complex industrial environments.
Addressing the widely asked question of what humanoid robots can actually accomplish, Li Chao revealed that Unitree has taken the lead in deploying these robots across energy industry settings. Current implementations include unmanned convenience stores, power distribution cabinet inspections, and operational tasks, with robots handling maintenance work in high-risk and hazardous environments to achieve cost reduction and efficiency gains. The humanoid robot solutions integrate AI algorithms with autonomous navigation, enabling intelligent meter recognition, partial discharge detection, infrared temperature measurement, and gas detection. Equipped with professional sensing gear, these robots provide round-the-clock, all-terrain monitoring of electrical equipment while lowering overall operational expenses.
Li Chao also candidly acknowledged the existing challenges within the industry. He noted that the wide variety of instrument models in industrial settings, combined with insufficient sample data for detecting defects like leaks and spills, leaves room for improvement in image recognition accuracy. He expressed hope for deeper collaboration with industry partners to drive wider adoption in industrial scenarios.
Unitree has already accumulated diverse industry experience, integrating drones, unmanned ground vehicles, and quadruped robots into an integrated air-ground-space collaborative management platform for urban maintenance and inspection operations. Additionally, quadruped robots equipped with reconnaissance gear have been deployed for fire emergency response, conducting fire detection and providing hardware support for smart firefighting initiatives.
"We aim to drive physical evolution with AI, enabling robots to learn and grow," Li Chao explained. He described how the company has established a cloud-edge collaborative architecture that enables efficient coordination between the robot's "body" and "brain," mitigating the power consumption pressure from centralized onboard computing. This approach charts a path from single robots toward multi-robot cluster collaborative operations.
Li Chao concluded by emphasizing that robot development must ultimately be human-centered, with embodied intelligence and robotics technology ultimately serving people. He expressed anticipation for working alongside industry peers to jointly explore a new future for the sector.