CHENGDU — Zhang Ruirui felt a step closer to his dream of making the world's smartest robots, when seven humanoid robots developed by his team were unveiled on Dec 27 in Southwest China's Sichuan province, an area best known as home of the giant panda.

The robots will be used at the World Games 2025, which will be hosted by Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, and are expected to feature in various scenarios, such as the torch relay, sports exhibitions, reception and retail services.

"It's a significant recognition of our work, but that's only the beginning," said Zhang, president of Chengdu Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co Ltd.

Zhang said CHRIC has focused on the "brain" technology of humanoid robots — aiming to create the "most powerful brain" for these machines.

"The brain is particularly important as it enables the robots to think, understand and have reasoning capabilities that traditional industrial or service robots lack, with the latter operating via pre-programmed instructions," said Zhang.

Since the beginning of 2024, CHRIC has managed over 30 world-leading technological achievements related to humanoid robot "brains", including its development of China's first humanoid robot high-speed inference model based on diffusion architecture and the country's first multimodal task execution system for humanoid robots.

Recent milestones achieved by Zhang's team in humanoid robot development reflect the current explosive growth of China's humanoid robotics industry.