China's humanoid robots take centre stage in Chinese New Year Celebration

China's most-watched TV show, the annual CCTV Spring Festival gala, on Monday showcased the country's cutting-edge industrial policy and Beijing's push to dominate humanoid robots and the future of manufacturing.



Four rising humanoid robot startups - Unitree Robotics, Galbot, ⁠Noetix and MagicLab - demonstrated their products at the gala, a televised event and touchstone for China comparable to the Super Bowl for the United States.



The programme's first three sketches prominently featured humanoid robots, including ‌a lengthy martial arts demonstration where over a dozen Unitree humanoids performed sophisticated fight sequences waving swords, poles and nunchucks in close proximity to human children performers.



The fight sequences included a technically ambitious one that imitated the wobbly moves and ​backward falls of China's "drunken boxing" martial arts style, showing innovations in multi-robot coordination and fault recovery - where a robot can get up after falling down.



The programme's opening sketch also prominently featured Bytedance's AI chatbot Doubao, while four Noetix humanoid robots appeared alongside human actors in a comedy ‌skit and MagicLab robots performed a synchronised dance with human performers during the song "We Are Made in China".