Real-World Training Drives Application and Deployment; Competitions Promote Industrial Development: Press Conference for the Humanoid Robot and Embodied AI Real-World Training Challenge Held in Beijing

On November 2, the press conference for the Humanoid Robot and Embodied AI Real-World Training Challenge was held in Beijing. It released the overall arrangements and competition plan for the event and issued the call for teams to assemble. Yi Maolin, Standing Committee member of the Ma'anshan Municipal Party Committee and Executive Vice Mayor; Liang Liang, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Institute of Electronics; Wu Bin, Secretary-General of the Ma'anshan Municipal Government; and Teng Qing, Director of the Ma'anshan Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, attended the press conference. Liang Liang, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Institute of Electronics, delivered a speech. Liang said that humanoid robot and embodied AI technologies are evolving rapidly, and the industry is entering an important window for large-scale application. Industry development is shifting from focusing on technology and supply to "targeting scenarios and solving problems." The industry's focus has moved from "jumping on stage and running on the field" to "working in factories and being used in supermarkets." As mass production and deployment accelerate, how to enable robots to understand real environments and complete real tasks more safely and reliably has become an important issue for coordinated development of technology and industry. To implement the national deployment for innovative development of the humanoid robot and embodied AI industry, and in response to the 2026 special action on real-world training for humanoid robots and embodied AI jointly launched by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, the Ma'anshan Municipal People's Government, the China Institute of Electronics, and the World Robot Cooperation Organization jointly host the challenge. The challenge adheres to application-driven development, is grounded in the current stage of industry development, and comprehensively considers technical capability, scenario conditions, and practical needs. It sets 13 competition items across five scenarios: "embodied AI plus logistics, manufacturing, services, safety, and culture and sports." The "examination venues" are moved into real production and living settings such as manufacturing enterprises, logistics companies, hotels, communities, and supermarkets. Through real tasks, real environments, and real operating conditions, the challenge tests the maturity of technologies and products, accumulates high-quality real-robot data and industry deployment experience, and promotes effective matching between innovative results and application needs. Under the principles of "promoting research, production, and use through competition," the challenge aims to inject new momentum into the high-quality development of the humanoid robot and embodied AI industry. Yi Maolin, Standing Committee member of the Ma'anshan Municipal Party Committee and Executive Vice Mayor, delivered a speech. Yi said that Ma'anshan has an emerging industrial cluster, with more than 100 companies across the city's AI and robotics industry chains. It has been approved to build the Anhui Province AI Visual Large Model Future Industry Pioneer Zone, and it strives to develop the AI and robotics industries into a strategic industrial cluster worth tens of billions of yuan during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. It also has a powerful and efficient computing power foundation, and has already built the Ma'anshan Embodied Robot Innovation