While the two countries are neck and neck in the race for robotics supremacy, each is playing to its own strengths. China is leaning into its capacity for scale and speed, with an advantage in supply chain maturity, but analysts said the US has the edge when it comes to producing the next Tesla or OpenAI – game-changing giants that redefine the industry.
“In the US, the focus is on staying at the forefront of technology, exploring unknown technical challenges; in China, the focus is more on how to integrate existing technologies for practical application,” said Xu Xuecheng, a lead scientist with the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
He argued that Chinese companies are broadly more invested in building fully integrated humanoid robots for real-world use, while US firms focus on a more generalised intelligence that could include functions factories would consider unnecessary.
Isn’t practical application where the real money be made?