On May 12, 2025, Huawei and UBTECH officially signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement in Shenzhen, focusing on embodied intelligence and humanoid robots to carry out in-depth cooperation, and are committed to promoting humanoid robots from laboratories to industrial and home scenarios.
1. Complementary technologies: Strong alliances build a solid foundation for innovation
Huawei's self-developed Ascend AI chip, which uses a heterogeneous computing architecture and has a strong computing power and energy efficiency ratio, can support efficient training and inference of deep learning models, and is the "brain" of robots, provides fast computing support. Kunpeng processors are used in edge computing and industrial scenarios, helping robots accurately perceive the environment, make quick decisions, and interact smoothly with their superior computing capabilities. The HUAWEI CLOUD platform aggregates massive amounts of data and rich computing power, and its multimodal AI model deeply integrates cutting-edge technologies such as natural language processing, visual recognition, and action generation, enabling humanoid robots to understand complex instructions, identify diverse scenarios, and generate corresponding actions.
UBTECH has a deep accumulation in humanoid robot hardware and algorithms. Its full-stack technology covers key areas such as mechanical structure, motion control, sensor fusion, and human-computer interaction, and its Walker series of humanoid robots have been widely experimented and applied in industrial, commercial, household and other scenarios, accumulating massive real-world scene data, which is extremely valuable for training and optimizing algorithm models. Taking the Walker S1 humanoid robot as an example, in an automobile manufacturing plant, it successfully completes tasks such as parts sorting and product quality inspection through precise motion planning and efficient servo drive technology, improving assembly efficiency by 23%, showing great application value. In this cooperation, the seamless docking and deep integration of the technologies of the two parties will jointly overcome many problems in the field of humanoid robots and set a new benchmark for the upgrading of humanoid robot technology.
Figure: Huawei joins hands with UBTECH to debut the "King Bomb" combination of humanoid robot tracks
2. Market Potential: A $100 Billion Blue Ocean Awaits Exploration
According to market research institutions, by 2030, the global humanoid robot market will exceed 150 billion US dollars, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 20%, and industrial and household scenarios will become the main driving force. In the industrial field, humanoid robots rely on high flexibility and intelligence to adapt to complex and changeable production environments, complete diversified tasks, and effectively reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve quality. The application of UBTECH's Walker S1 robot in NIO's factory has confirmed its great potential.
In the home scenario, the market prospect of humanoid robots is also unlimited. With the improvement of living standards and the change of consumption concepts, people have a strong demand for smart home assistants. Humanoid robots can undertake housework, provide emotional companionship, intelligent security, education and entertainment and other services, and become all-round assistants in family life. It is predicted that by 2025, the market size of home service robots will exceed 10 billion US dollars, and it will maintain rapid growth in the next few years. The cooperation between Huawei and UBTECH will accelerate the R&D and mass production of home service robots, promote their affordable and functional applications, accelerate the introduction of humanoid robots into thousands of households, and open a new era of smart home life.
3. Industry impact: Reshape the competitive landscape of the industry
Huawei and UBTECH have joined hands to stir up a thousand waves in the humanoid robot industry and reshape the competitive landscape of the industry. On the one hand, the two sides have joined forces to form strong technical barriers and brand effects, attracting more upstream and downstream enterprises to join and build a huge and complete industrial ecosystem. At the hardware level, promote the coordinated development of key components such as sensors, chips, and reducers, and improve the stability and efficiency of the industrial chain; At the software level, we will promote the continuous innovation and optimization of operating systems, middleware, application software, etc., and provide support for the intelligent upgrade of humanoid robots. On the other hand, this cooperation intensifies market competition, prompts other companies to increase R&D investment and innovation, improve product performance and service quality, promote the rapid development and iterative upgrading of the entire humanoid robot industry, and inject impetus into the long-term development of the industry.
4. Strategic significance: Leading AI technology innovation and industrial upgrading
From a macro strategic perspective, the cooperation between Huawei and UBTECH is of far-reaching significance. For Huawei, this is a key layout in the field of artificial intelligence, expanding the application scenarios and market space of AI technology, and consolidating its leading position in AI hardware and software infrastructure. Partnering with UBTECH to deeply integrate AI capabilities with robotics technology to create more competitive smart products and solutions, helping Huawei occupy the commanding heights in the intelligent society. For UBTECH, the cooperation with Huawei to provide strong technical backing and resource support will help improve its R&D level and innovation capabilities, accelerate product commercialization and market promotion, enhance its competitiveness in the global market, and promote its leap from a domestic leader to a global leader.
5. Safety and Ethics: The "Tight Mantra" of Technological Development
The rapid development of humanoid robots has also led to safety and ethical considerations. At the safety level, humanoid robots have entered industrial production and family life, and their safety issues should not be underestimated. During the operation of the robot, it may cause physical harm to humans due to system failure or mis-operation, or leakage of user privacy information due to potential security risks in data transmission and storage. Enterprises need to put security first, establish and improve the security guarantee system, and adopt multiple security mechanisms and encryption technologies to ensure the reliable operation of humanoid robots and the security of user data.
At the ethical level, the highly intelligent and anthropomorphic humanoid robots have led to a re-examination of the relationship between humans and machines. When robots have certain independent learning and decision-making capabilities, how to define the boundaries of their responsibilities and rights, and how to avoid negative impacts on human society, such as leading to the loss of human jobs and changing the mode of social interaction, have become ethical problems that must be faced and solved. The government, enterprises, academia and all sectors of society need to work together to formulate ethical guidelines and laws and regulations to guide the development of humanoid robot technology in line with human interests and values.
In short, the signing of a comprehensive cooperation agreement between Huawei and UBTECH has injected strong impetus into the development of the humanoid robot industry. We have reason to believe that with the joint efforts of both sides, humanoid robots will accelerate from laboratories to practical scenarios such as industrial workshops and family living rooms, opening a new era of human-machine collaboration and intelligent co-prosperity. But at the same time, we must take a prudent attitude towards safety and ethics in the process of technological development, and build a safe, reliable and sustainable humanoid robot development environment through multi-party collaboration and joint efforts, so that humanoid robot technology can truly benefit human society.
