# Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/beijing_humanoid_robot_innovation_center
> Updated: 2026-07-14
> Categories: Chinese AI, Humanoid Robots, Robotics Companies
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), the free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Reuse freely with attribution to "AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai)".

| Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center | |
| --- | --- |
| General information | |
| **Registered name** | Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics Co., Ltd. |
| **Chinese name** | 北京人形机器人创新中心 |
| **Brand** | X-Humanoid |
| **Founded** | November 2, 2023 |
| **Headquarters** | Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (Yizhuang / E-Town), Beijing, China |
| **Industry** | [Robotics](/wiki/robotics), [embodied AI](/wiki/embodied_ai) |
| **National status** | National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center (October 2024) |
| **CEO / General manager** | Xiong Youjun |
| **Chief technology officer** | Tang Jian |
| **Registered capital** | 460 million yuan (May 2025) |
| **Key shareholders** | [Xiaomi](/wiki/xiaomi) Robotics, [UBTech](/wiki/ubtech), Jingcheng Machinery and Electronics, Beijing Yizhuang Robot Technology Industry Development |
| **Research partner** | Institute of Automation, [Chinese Academy of Sciences](/wiki/chinese_academy_of_sciences) |
| **Flagship products** | [Tiangong](/wiki/tiangong) (Tien Kung) humanoid series, [Tian Yi 2.0](/wiki/tian_yi_2.0) wheeled humanoid, Huisi Kaiwu (Wise KaiWu) embodied-AI platform |
| **First funding round** | ~700 million yuan (about US$100 million), February 2026 |
| **Website** | [x-humanoid.com](https://www.x-humanoid.com/) |

The **Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center** (BHRIC; Chinese: 北京人形机器人创新中心), also registered as **Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics Co., Ltd.** and commercially branded **X-Humanoid**, is a Chinese national research entity specializing in [embodied AI](/wiki/embodied_ai) and general-purpose [humanoid robot](/wiki/humanoid_robot) development. Founded on November 2, 2023 in Beijing's Yizhuang district (the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, or E-Town), it was China's first provincial-level humanoid robot innovation platform, and in October 2024 it was elevated to the National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center, one of two such national-level humanoid centers in China alongside Shanghai's [OpenLoong](/wiki/openloong) initiative. The center functions as a shared R&D and integration hub, providing laboratories, testbeds, and demonstration spaces where universities, startups, and manufacturers co-develop perception, control, and actuation technologies for humanoid robots.[1][2][4]

X-Humanoid is best known for the [Tiangong](/wiki/tiangong) (Tien Kung, 天工) family of full-size, electrically driven humanoid robots and the Huisi Kaiwu (Wise KaiWu, 慧思开物) universal embodied-AI platform that powers them. In April 2025 a Tiangong Ultra unit won the world's first humanoid robot half-marathon in Beijing, finishing the 21.0975 km course in 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds. Beyond the bipedal Tiangong line the center also develops the [Tian Yi 2.0](/wiki/tian_yi_2.0) wheeled humanoid, and it has become one of China's most open-source-active humanoid labs, releasing the RoboMIND manipulation dataset, the Pelican-VL vision-language model, and the full Tiangong hardware design. In February 2026 it raised more than 700 million yuan (about US$100 million) in its first market-oriented funding round, and its Tiangong 3.0 went on to win the inaugural Beijing Yizhuang Robot Warrior Challenge in April 2026.[3][4][6][17]

## History

### Establishment (2023)

The Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics Co., Ltd. was officially registered in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (commonly called Yizhuang or E-Town) on November 2, 2023, as part of China's national strategy to accelerate humanoid robot development. It was the country's first provincial-level humanoid robot innovation center, jointly sponsored by the Beijing Municipal Government and enterprises across the robot, components, and large-model value chain. According to Beijing's official announcement, the center was charged with building both hardware and software foundational platforms, addressing core challenges such as motion-control systems and open-source robotics operating systems, and supporting national and city-level testing infrastructure for the industry.[1][3]

Four partners anchored the joint venture at founding. Beijing Jingcheng Machinery Electric Holding Co., Ltd. (京城机电), Beijing Xiaomi Robotics Technology Co., Ltd. (a subsidiary of [Xiaomi](/wiki/xiaomi)), and [UBTech](/wiki/ubtech) Robotics Corp. each held 28.57 percent of the venture, while a state-backed subsidiary tied to Yizhuang's holdings retained the remaining 14.29 percent. The Institute of Automation of the [Chinese Academy of Sciences](/wiki/chinese_academy_of_sciences) also participated as a co-founding research partner, contributing on motion control and embodied intelligence. Registered capital began at 300 million yuan, rose to 350 million yuan later in November 2023 when the Beijing Yizhuang Robot Technology Industry Development Company joined, and reached 460 million yuan by May 2025. Xiong Youjun, who also serves as chief technology officer of UBTech Robotics, became general manager of X-Humanoid, while Tang Jian was named chief technology officer.[1][4][31]

The center was conceived within China's broader 2023 national strategy for humanoid robotics. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) had announced earlier that year a target for mass production of humanoid robots by 2025, along with a plan to cultivate two or three globally influential humanoid robot companies. Beijing's Yizhuang district committed to assembling a complete supply chain in the area, eventually clustering more than one hundred humanoid robot and component companies around the center.[2][3]

### First-generation Tiangong (2024)

On April 27, 2024, the center unveiled the first generation of Tiangong on stage at a Beijing E-Town event, presenting it as the world's first full-size, purely electric-driven humanoid robot capable of running. The initial version stood about 1.63 m tall, weighed roughly 43 kg, and moved at around 6 km/h. It ran on a 48 V / 15 Ah battery and an onboard compute system rated for roughly 550 trillion operations per second, paired with high-precision inertial measurement units, 3D vision sensors, and six-axis force sensors at the wrists and ankles.[10] An upgraded version later in 2024, generally referred to as Tiangong 2.0, roughly doubled that pace to about 12 km/h, with stable cruising around 10 km/h.[11]

### National designation and open-sourcing (2024)

On October 24, 2024, MIIT approved the center's elevation to a National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center (国家地方共建具身智能机器人创新中心). The designation gave X-Humanoid a nationally recognized role as an innovation hub for embodied intelligence and placed it alongside the Shanghai center as one of two national-level humanoid platforms in China, distinct from the other provincial innovation centers later established in cities such as Chengdu, Guangdong, Anhui, and Zhejiang. With the status came responsibilities for shared testing infrastructure, standardization, dataset curation, and open-sourcing of core technologies.[2]

In November 2024, the center released the full Tiangong hardware design package as open source, including mechanical schematics, control algorithms, and a simulation environment, an early signal of the open-ecosystem posture that would define much of its later strategy.[12]

### Huisi Kaiwu and the world's first humanoid robot half-marathon (2025)

In March 2025, the center launched its Huisi Kaiwu universal embodied-intelligence platform, described in Chinese state media as the world's first universal embodied-AI platform supporting multiple robot bodies and task scenarios (discussed in detail below).[13] A month later, on April 19, 2025, X-Humanoid's Tiangong Ultra robot won the world's first humanoid robot half-marathon, held alongside the Beijing E-Town half-marathon in Yizhuang. Twenty robot teams started the 21.0975 km course at 7:30 a.m., racing on a parallel track to roughly twelve thousand human runners. Only a handful of robots crossed the finish line, and Tiangong Ultra was the only entry to come in under the three-hour qualifying threshold set by the Chinese Athletic Association, finishing in 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds, an average pace of about 7.6 km/h.[6][8][9]

During the race, engineers from X-Humanoid jogged alongside Tiangong Ultra to monitor the system, and the robot underwent three to four hot battery swaps along the route. Ren Yawei, a representative of the National and Local Co-built Embodied AI Robotics Innovation Center, said the team had "previously optimized our battery-swapping technology to enable rapid replacements, keeping each swap within about three to four minutes."[7] Other notable competitors included [Unitree](/wiki/unitree)'s G1, Leju Robotics' Kuavo, and NOETIX's N2. The event drew global media coverage and was widely interpreted as both a public demonstration of progress and an honest stress test that revealed how far humanoid locomotion still has to go, with many robots trembling, stumbling, or failing to finish.[5][10] Xiong Youjun, who led the Tiangong Ultra team, framed the result as a milestone in its own right: "Simply participating in this event and successfully completing a half-marathon is a heroic achievement in itself."[4]

### World Humanoid Robot Games (2025)

In August 2025, the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games were held over three days at the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing, with 280 teams from sixteen countries competing across 26 sports. X-Humanoid finished tied with Hangzhou-based Unitree at the top of the medal table, taking ten medals including two golds. Tiangong Ultra won the 100-meter sprint with a time of 21.50 seconds and also took gold in a novel-materials handling event that simulated factory-floor scenarios, and the robot served as the central flag bearer at the games' opening.[14][15]

According to CTO Tang Jian, Tiangong was the only robot in the running events that competed entirely under autonomous navigation rather than relying on a human operator with a remote control. The system used real-time perception and motion planning, an upgrade from the ultra-wideband (UWB) semi-autonomous navigation it had used at the half-marathon a few months earlier.[14]

### CES 2026 showcase

From January 6 to 8, 2026, X-Humanoid exhibited at [CES](/wiki/consumer_electronics_show) 2026 in Las Vegas, showing the Embodied Tien Kung 2.0, the Embodied Tien Kung Ultra, and the Wise KaiWu AI platform. On the show floor, Tien Kung 2.0 demonstrated autonomous parts sorting, with the company highlighting fast response times based on its UVMC technology, motion-control loops running above 60 Hz, and resilient bimanual coordination. Tien Kung Ultra was presented as the world's first half-marathon-winning humanoid robot.[16]

At the same event, X-Humanoid disclosed several deployment partnerships, including unmanned production lines at Foton Cummins engine plants, power-grid inspection work with the China Electric Power Research Institute, athletic testing with the Li-Ning Sports Science Laboratory, and a pharmaceutical-manufacturing collaboration with Bayer.[16]

### First funding round (2026)

On February 3, 2026, X-Humanoid closed its first market-oriented funding round of more than 700 million yuan, equivalent to about US$100 million, just days before the launch of Tiangong 3.0. The round was led by state-linked vehicles, including the Beijing Robotics Industry Development Investment Fund (E-Town Capital) and the Beijing Gaojingjian (High-end and Sophisticated) Industrial Development Investment Fund, with TH Capital also participating; state investors such as the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund and Yizhuang state-owned asset vehicles were part of the same mix. Strategic investors included Baidu and Kyland Technology Co., Ltd. The center said the proceeds would be used to advance embodied-AI software, scale production of the Tiangong family, and bridge laboratory prototypes to production-grade deployment through its pilot manufacturing facility.[17][18]

By that point the center was operating a 9,700-square-meter pilot verification facility in Yizhuang, completed in 2025, with annual production capacity of around 2,000 humanoid units and a stated target of 5,000. According to Caixin, the Tiangong family was being offered to industrial and research customers at prices ranging from 299,000 to 779,000 yuan, and the 1,000th customized unit had rolled off the line in January 2026.[17]

### Tiangong 3.0 launch and Robot Warrior Challenge (2026)

On February 10, 2026, X-Humanoid unveiled the Embodied Tiangong 3.0 (Embodied Tien Kung 3.0) at a launch event in Beijing, with the formal press announcement following on February 16. The center described it as the industry's first full-size humanoid robot to combine whole-body high-dynamic motion control with tactile interaction. In demonstrations the robot vaulted a one-meter wall using a single hand, climbed 134 stairs continuously, turned small knobs with millimeter-level precision, and performed kneeling, bending, and turning maneuvers in confined spaces. The launch was accompanied by an expanded open-source release covering hardware blueprints, the Pelican-VL vision-language model, the RoboMIND teleoperation dataset, a world model, the motion-control framework, training toolchains, and the ArtVIP simulation asset library.[19][20][21]

On April 18, 2026, Tiangong 3.0 won the inaugural Beijing Yizhuang Robot Warrior Challenge, completing the entire course autonomously without human intervention or remote control. The event was designed to evaluate humanoid robots in scenarios modeled on disaster response and hazardous operations, with tasks including pendulum traversal, barrier breaching, and obstacle clearance. The robot achieved the highest overall score and received the Warrior Intelligent Mobility Award, becoming the first fully autonomous winner of the challenge.[23][24]

## Who owns and runs the center?

The Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics Co., Ltd. is structured as a joint venture rather than a pure government laboratory or a private startup, which was unusual at its founding. The shareholding split among a state-owned industrial conglomerate, two leading consumer-electronics and robotics companies, and a state development arm reflected a deliberate effort to bring public and private capabilities under one roof, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences supplying research support on motion control and embodied intelligence.[4][31]

| Shareholder / partner | Role |
|----------------------|------|
| [Xiaomi](/wiki/xiaomi) Robotics | Complete robot systems and consumer-robotics expertise |
| [UBTech](/wiki/ubtech) Robotics | Humanoid robot OEM partner |
| Jingcheng Machinery and Electronics | Industrial automation, core mechanical components |
| Beijing Yizhuang Robot Technology Industry Development | State-backed industrial fund and zone operator |
| Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences | Algorithm and embodied-AI research input |
| MIIT and Beijing Municipal Government | National and regional oversight (national designation October 2024) |

The senior management team is drawn primarily from UBTech. General manager Xiong Youjun continues to serve as UBTech's chief technology officer and is a well-known figure in Chinese humanoid robotics, having appeared as a public spokesperson at events including the World Robot Conference and the Boao Forum. Describing the gap the center is trying to fill, Xiong said at the March 2025 Huisi Kaiwu launch: "Embodied AI is still in its infancy. The industry is in need of a universal intelligent platform that is compatible with different body types and scenarios, and can perform general tasks."[13][15]

Tang Jian leads X-Humanoid's technology efforts as chief technology officer and has been the center's most visible technical spokesperson, particularly during the half-marathon and the World Humanoid Robot Games, where he discussed the move from semi-autonomous UWB navigation to full autonomy. He framed the technical priority around the robot's controller: "It is vital for a humanoid robot to have a 'brain,' the part capable of natural interaction, spatial perception, understanding of intention, hierarchical planning, and error reflection." For the first two years after founding, the center operated primarily on its registered capital and government-linked support before opening to external commercial capital in the February 2026 round; its main shareholders are themselves backed by major Chinese investors, with Xiaomi a publicly listed conglomerate, UBTech listed in Hong Kong, and the Yizhuang holding companies part of Beijing's state asset network.[13][17]

## Tiangong (Tien Kung) series

The Tiangong line is the center's flagship full-size bipedal humanoid platform. The name is romanized both as Tiangong (from the Mandarin pinyin) and as Tien Kung in X-Humanoid's own English materials, which market the products as the Embodied Tien Kung family; both refer to the same Chinese name, 天工. The name references the Ming-dynasty technical encyclopedia *Tiangong Kaiwu*, a nod to Chinese craft tradition that also echoes in the Huisi Kaiwu software platform. X-Humanoid positions the Tiangong body and the Huisi Kaiwu stack together as a closed loop of perception, decision-making, and execution.[21]

| Model | Launch | Height | Weight | Top speed | Notable capabilities |
|-------|--------|--------|--------|-----------|----------------------|
| Tiangong 1.0 | April 27, 2024 | 1.63 m | 43 kg | ~6 km/h | First full-size pure-electric humanoid to run on stage; visual recognition, voice interaction, object handling[10] |
| Tiangong 2.0 | Late 2024 | 1.63 m | ~43 kg | ~12 km/h | Roughly doubled running speed; stable cruise around 10 km/h; first Tiangong to be fully open sourced (November 2024)[11][12] |
| Tiangong Ultra | April 2025 | 1.80 m | 52 to 55 kg | Endurance-tuned | Won world's first humanoid robot half-marathon, 2h 40m 42s over 21.0975 km; won 100 m at 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games[6][8] |
| Tiangong 3.0 (Embodied Tien Kung 3.0) | February 10, 2026 | 1.69 m | 62 kg | High dynamic | 43 degrees of freedom; whole-body control with tactile feedback; one-handed 1 m vault; millimeter-level manipulation; powered by Huisi Kaiwu[19][21] |

The first-generation Tiangong was positioned as a universal full-size platform engineered for long endurance, meaningful payload, and coordinated bimanual manipulation, and was made widely available for secondary development, with the platform reportedly opened to several hundred academic and commercial institutions. On complex terrain the running versions reached roughly 12 km/h, which X-Humanoid described as a first for a full-size, purely electric humanoid.[2]

Tiangong 3.0, unveiled in February 2026, is the most capable variant. The center describes it as the first full-size humanoid robot capable of touch-interactive, high-dynamic [whole-body](/wiki/whole_body_control) control, integrating whole-body motion control with tactile interaction across the entire body. Public demos showed it clearing a 1-meter-high block with a one-handed vault, performing parkour-style movements, kneeling and bending in confined spaces, and turning small knobs with millimeter-level precision while remaining stable under disturbance. The robot has multiple expansion interfaces that support flexible integration of end-effectors and tools, enabling rapid adaptation to specialized operations, industrial manufacturing, and commercial services, and X-Humanoid said it is built to be "more open and easier to use," with ROS2, MQTT, and TCP/IP support so that "users can work on secondary development without restructuring the underlying technology." It is scheduled to enter mass delivery in the second half of 2026.[19][21][22]

Beyond the headline dimensions above, published engineering specifications for the commercial Embodied Tien Kung configurations include the following. Some values combine figures released by X-Humanoid with third-party robotics databases, and a few were not formally disclosed by the company at launch; publicly reported height and weight figures for the 2.0 configuration in particular vary across databases.[28][29][30]

| Specification | Embodied Tien Kung 2.0 | Embodied Tien Kung 3.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Degrees of freedom | 20 (whole body) | 43 (whole body), 12 in the hands |
| Joint peak torque | not disclosed | ~400 N·m |
| Hands | Five-fingered dexterous hands | Five-fingered, 12 DoF |
| Battery system | Dual hot-swap packs | ~1.5 to 2 hour runtime |
| Onboard compute | NVIDIA Jetson Orin modules | Custom robotics OS, open control stack |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi, voice, app | 5G, Ethernet, Wi-Fi |
| Software | Huisi Kaiwu | Huisi Kaiwu, ROS2, MQTT, TCP/IP |
| Reported list price | ~299,000 yuan (about US$41,000) | ~US$125,000 |

### Tiangong Ultra

Tiangong Ultra is a high-endurance variant of the platform tuned for outdoor running and competition use. Public sources describe it at about 1.80 m tall and in the 52 to 55 kg range, with a lightweight build, integrated joints, an air-cooling system to manage joint heating during long runs, and hot-swappable battery packs that allow extended operation. It is the version that won the Beijing humanoid robot half-marathon in April 2025 and the 100 m sprint at the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games, and X-Humanoid positions it as a flagship demonstration of full-size electric-drive humanoid mobility.[6][8][16]

## Tian Yi 2.0 wheeled humanoid

Alongside the bipedal Tiangong line, the center develops the [Tian Yi 2.0](/wiki/tian_yi_2.0) wheeled humanoid platform, which pairs a humanoid upper body with a wheeled mobile base for warehouse and industrial settings. Powered by the Huisi Kaiwu platform, Tian Yi 2.0 performs autonomous bin picking and material handling, and it took first and second place in a material-handling competition.[25]

Both Tian Yi 2.0 and the Embodied Tiangong 2.0 are deployed on an unmanned production line at a Foton Cummins engine plant, where they autonomously handle bin pickup, transport, and placement across different shelf heights and container types. The wheeled design trades bipedal versatility for stability and endurance in structured indoor environments, complementing the legged Tiangong robots in the center's product range.[25]

## What is the Huisi Kaiwu (Wise KaiWu) platform?

The **Huisi Kaiwu** (慧思开物, rendered in the company's English materials as Wise KaiWu, and translating loosely as "wise thinking, opening things") platform launched on March 13, 2025 as the center's flagship software stack. Chinese state media, including Beijing Daily and Xinhua, billed it as the world's first universal embodied-AI platform compatible with multiple body types: robotic arms, wheeled platforms, and bipedal humanoids. The center frames it as a general-purpose embodied-AI stack that integrates cognitive and physical systems into a closed-loop architecture for perception, decision-making, and execution, in which a single instance of the central intelligence can manage several robots or multiple skill sets at once.[13][22]

The platform is structured around two halves working together, which the center describes as a dual-brain design:

- A task-planning **brain**, driven by a large multimodal model, that decomposes natural-language instructions into sub-tasks and handles higher-level reasoning, language understanding, and task planning.
- A data-driven skill-execution **cerebellum** (or small brain) that converts those sub-tasks into low-level motor commands and handles real-time motion control.

CTO Tang Jian summarized the design philosophy as lowering the barrier to entry: "The 'APP plus robot' model packages complex technical capabilities such as reasoning, planning and skill invocation into simple procedures, lowering the threshold for users." The stack includes a [world model](/wiki/world_model), a [vision-language model](/wiki/vision_language_model) (Pelican-VL), and a [vision-language-action](/wiki/vision_language_action_model) (VLA) model used for real-time control and obstacle avoidance. It supports common robotics protocols including ROS2, MQTT, and TCP/IP, and provides a low-code development environment with extensive documentation, which the center says lets third parties extend functionality without restructuring the underlying systems. The Tiangong 2.0 hardware platform runs Huisi Kaiwu on NVIDIA Jetson Orin compute modules.[13][21][22]

In May 2026, the center introduced an upgraded variant called the Wise KaiWu Agent, which adds global scene perception and a dynamic memory system, allowing robots to evolve from passive task execution toward proactive task handling.[27]

## Open-source initiatives

The center has built a reputation as one of the more open-source-friendly large humanoid labs in China. Much of its work is distributed through the Open-X-Humanoid GitHub organization, which hosts hardware schematics, training environments, models, and datasets.[32]

| Project | Released | What it includes |
|--------|----------|------------------|
| Tiangong open-hardware release | November 2024 | Full mechanical design files, control algorithms, and simulation environment for the original Tiangong[12] |
| TienKung-Lab | 2024 | A direct [Isaac Lab](/wiki/isaac_lab) workflow for legged robots, with [reinforcement learning](/wiki/reinforcement_learning) training scripts[33] |
| RoboMIND | December 2024 | Multi-embodiment teleoperation dataset: 107,000 trajectories across 479 tasks and 96 object classes, plus about 5,000 real-world failure demonstrations; covers Tien Kung (about 19,000 trajectories), Franka Panda, AgileX Cobot Magic V2, and UR-5e robots; released under the Apache 2.0 license[34] |
| Pelican-VL 1.0 | November 2025 | Open-source vision-language brain models for embodied AI, at parameter scales from 7B to 72B, developed by the center's WFM System Group[35] |
| ArtVIP | February 2026 | A collection of 206 high-quality [digital-twin](/wiki/digital_twin) articulated objects in USD format, bundled with the Tiangong 3.0 platform release[21] |

Beyond these headline projects, the Open-X-Humanoid organization also hosts XR-1, a vision-language-action framework for cross-embodiment manipulation; an x-humanoid-training-toolchain that links Tiangong hardware to the RoboMIND dataset and the LeRobot framework; TienKung_URDF, the robot's mechanical description files; Deploy_Tienkung, a C++ control implementation; TienKung_ROS, the low-level ROS-based software stack; and RoboMIND-Sim, a simulation environment.[32]

The RoboMIND paper defines the dataset as a benchmark of roughly 107,000 demonstration trajectories gathered through human teleoperation across four robot embodiments, and it was co-developed with [Peking University](/wiki/peking_university) and the [Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence](/wiki/baai). Released as RoboMIND V1.0 and later V2.0, the collection had exceeded 15,000 downloads across Hugging Face and other platforms by late 2025 and had been adopted by researchers at [Tsinghua University](/wiki/tsinghua_university), the University of Hong Kong, and elsewhere. With the Tiangong 3.0 release the center went further and open-sourced the robot-body design, motion-control framework, world model, embodied VLM, and training toolchains, in what observers described as one of China's most aggressive plays for a global humanoid-developer ecosystem.[19][21][34]

## TG-VLA and the HEX whole-body VLA framework (2026)

Around early July 2026, X-Humanoid unveiled TG-VLA, which it describes as the world's first whole-body [vision-language-action model](/wiki/vision_language_action_model) framework for full-size humanoid robots. The company presents TG-VLA as an attempt to move humanoids past what it calls "mobile machines with two arms attached," systems that can walk, grasp, and follow instructions but struggle when a task needs the torso, legs, arms, hands, balance, vision, and memory to work together. The stated aim is to treat the entire body as one coordinated system and to give the robot a fuller action chain: understand the task, remember the scene, predict what should happen next, coordinate the whole body, and adjust while acting.[37]

TG-VLA is organized around three components. HEX is the open-source whole-body VLA that learns across different humanoid bodies. HAF-VLA, described as a hierarchical action flow, decomposes whole-body motion into smaller subtasks so that a complex movement can be planned as a sequence of easier steps. DSRL-DCT handles online reinforcement learning for high-degree-of-freedom (high-DoF) humanoids by operating in a compressed latent space, which the center frames as a safer and more sample-efficient way to refine control on robots whose many coupled joints make direct learning unstable.[37]

HEX is by far the most fully documented of the three. It is described in an arXiv paper, "HEX: Humanoid-Aligned Experts for Cross-Embodiment Whole-Body Manipulation," from a team spanning X-Humanoid, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Nankai University, and Peking University that includes the center's CTO Tang Jian. HEX is built for coordinated manipulation on full-size bipedal humanoids and for [robot learning](/wiki/robot_learning) that transfers across heterogeneous embodiments. Where earlier arm-centric VLA systems such as [OpenVLA](/wiki/openvla) map vision and language to single-arm end-effector actions, HEX models the humanoid as one whole body, arguing that a robot should learn not only how to grasp an object better but also how its full body should move while doing so.[37][38]

On the technical side, HEX is pretrained on a cross-embodiment corpus described as more than 12 million frames drawn from seven humanoid embodiments and four large-scale data sources: X-Humanoid's own Tien Kung recordings, the Humanoid Everyday dataset (which covers the Unitree G1 and H1), AgiBot World Colosseo, and a Leju subset of the RoboCOIN collection.[38][41][42][43] To learn across bodies that differ in joints, sensors, and action spaces, HEX introduces a humanoid-aligned universal state representation that maps each robot's proprioceptive state into a fixed set of canonical body-part slots (left and right arms, hands, and legs, plus head, waist, and an auxiliary slot), filling absent parts with learned placeholder tokens. On top of this it uses a Mixture-of-Experts Unified Proprioceptive Predictor, combining routed experts with shared experts, to model whole-body coordination and temporal motion dynamics and to predict how the body's state should evolve as a task proceeds. The system is built on a Qwen3-VL vision-language backbone (about 2.4 billion parameters) with a flow-matching action head.[38]

HEX is open-source. X-Humanoid released the code, pretrained checkpoints, and real-world evaluation datasets through the Open-X-Humanoid GitHub organization, though the authors note that the data-collection pipeline for the Tien Kung robots and the low-level control policy were held back for commercial reasons.[39][40]

On the paper's own benchmarks, the authors report that HEX matches or beats strong recent baselines, including NVIDIA's GR00T N1.5 and the pi-0.5 policy. They report an average success rate of about 79.8 percent across a suite of previously seen manipulation tasks, versus roughly 70 to 72 percent for the strongest baselines, and about 61.8 percent on a generalization test with novel objects and poses. On a long-horizon mobile box-conveying task that combines walking with manipulation, the authors report 100 percent success on the initial grasp and turn-around stages and the best result of any method tested on the final box-placement stage. These figures come from the paper's controlled evaluations and should be read as demonstrated performance on those benchmarks rather than guarantees of open-world reliability.[38]

The other two components have so far been described mainly through X-Humanoid's July 2026 announcement rather than peer-reviewed papers. The center presents both HAF-VLA and DSRL-DCT as delivering strong benchmark results, and frames the resulting whole-body policy as reaching very high success on mobile-manipulation tasks. As of the unveiling, however, standalone technical reports for HAF-VLA and DSRL-DCT had not been publicly released, so those particular claims rest on the company's own presentation and cannot yet be independently verified in the way HEX's published results can.[37]

TG-VLA extends the open posture the center had already adopted with earlier releases such as the RoboMIND datasets, the XR-1 cross-embodiment VLA, and the TienKung-Lab reinforcement-learning framework, together with the broader open-sourcing of the Tiangong 3.0 body and Huisi Kaiwu stack. Observers treat HEX, shipped with model weights and evaluation data, as the center's most ambitious open contribution yet to a shared Chinese humanoid-robot software ecosystem, and as an early public attempt to give full-size humanoids a single learned policy that governs the whole body rather than the arms alone.[19][32][38]

## How does the Beijing center differ from the Shanghai OpenLoong center?

China runs two national-level humanoid robot innovation centers in parallel rather than a single one, and the two are easy to mix up. The comparison below lays them side by side.

| Aspect | Beijing center (BHRIC / X-Humanoid) | Shanghai center ([OpenLoong](/wiki/openloong)) |
|--------|------------------------------------|--------------------------------|
| Founded | November 2, 2023 | December 2023 |
| National designation | National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center (October 2024) | National and Local Co-built Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (May 2024) |
| Flagship robot | Tiangong / Tien Kung | Qinglong (青龙, Green Dragon) |
| Brand identity | X-Humanoid | OpenLoong community |
| Notable open source | Tiangong hardware, RoboMIND, Pelican-VL, ArtVIP, HEX | Qinglong hardware, Suzaku brain, Xuanwu control |
| Training infrastructure | Yizhuang facilities, partner factories | Building a 1,000-robot heterogeneous training base by 2027 |

Both centers hold their own MIIT designation and operate as peers. The Beijing center leans into embodied intelligence, full-body control, and competition-style demonstrations such as the half-marathon and the Robot Warrior Challenge, while the Shanghai center focuses on a shared open-source humanoid platform and a large-scale data-collection base.[2][36]

## Industrial deployments and partnerships

The pilot verification facility in Yizhuang serves as both a manufacturing line and a customer-integration center. By early 2026 the facility had reached an annual production capacity of about 2,000 units, with a target of 5,000, and had delivered its 1,000th customized robot. Tiangong units have been sold to industrial and research buyers at prices between 299,000 and 779,000 yuan depending on configuration.[17]

Disclosed real-world deployments and partnerships include:

| Partner | Use case |
|---------|----------|
| Foton Cummins | Unmanned engine production line; Tiangong 2.0 and Tian Yi 2.0 do bin picking, transport, and placement[25] |
| China Electric Power Research Institute | High-voltage power-facility inspection; robots perform walk-arounds and visual checks in hazardous conditions[16] |
| Bayer | Pharmaceutical and consumer-health manufacturing, including cleanroom and high-precision tasks[16] |
| Li-Ning Group | Sports-science and athletic testing, sports-apparel manufacturing, and warehouse operations[16] |

Chinese state media in 2026 reported additional pilots with cement maker Sinoma International and several auto manufacturers.[26] In public demonstrations the robots have handled fruit, tableware, blocks, and warehouse parcels, and walked across slopes, sand, grass, and gravel without significant adjustment, illustrating the center's push to move Tiangong from staged demos into repeatable factory work.[25]

## Reception and significance

X-Humanoid is generally treated in international press coverage as one of the most visible faces of China's humanoid robot push, and the BHRIC consistently appears near the top of Chinese rankings of humanoid robot companies by output and visibility, reflecting the priorities of the broader [Chinese AI industry](/wiki/china_ai). The South China Morning Post described the center's stated ambition as becoming an Android-equivalent platform for AI-enabled robotic systems, with the Tiangong body and Huisi Kaiwu stack playing the role of a shared substrate for the wider Chinese ecosystem. Coverage of the half-marathon was mixed in tone, celebrating Tiangong Ultra's win while also noting the many robots that fell, trembled, or failed to finish, which observers used as a public reminder that even basic humanoid locomotion remains hard.[4][5]

Reporting on the funding round emphasized the unusual structure of the center, with state-linked anchor investors and strategic backers from across the Chinese tech industry, including Baidu. Analysts cited in that coverage treated the round as a sign that Chinese policymakers and large-cap technology firms were aligning behind a shared platform play rather than backing a long list of competing startups. The Tiangong 3.0 open-sourcing was framed by industry commentators as part of the same strategy: building a developer base around an openly available Chinese humanoid stack at a moment when several Western competitors were tightening their intellectual-property positions. The July 2026 release of the TG-VLA framework and the open-source HEX model was read in the same light, extending that open-ecosystem strategy from robot bodies and datasets into the whole-body control policy itself.[17][18][19][37]

Coverage in outlets including PBS, CGTN, Xinhua, China Daily, and Interesting Engineering has tracked the half-marathon win, the Robot Warrior Challenge run, and the Tiangong 3.0 launch as marker events for Chinese humanoid robotics in 2025 and 2026. The German think tank MERICS identified the Beijing center as a key node in China's embodied-AI strategy in its 2025 report, noting that the dual-center model in Beijing and Shanghai represents China's preferred bet on coordinated state-industry consortia rather than a single national champion.[22][24][36]

## See also

- [Tiangong](/wiki/tiangong)
- [Tian Yi 2.0](/wiki/tian_yi_2.0)
- [OpenLoong](/wiki/openloong)
- [Humanoid robot](/wiki/humanoid_robot)
- [Embodied AI](/wiki/embodied_ai)
- [Vision-language-action model](/wiki/vision_language_action_model)
- [Whole-body control](/wiki/whole_body_control)
- [Robot learning](/wiki/robot_learning)
- [UBTech Robotics](/wiki/ubtech)
- [Xiaomi](/wiki/xiaomi)
- [Unitree Robotics](/wiki/unitree)
- [Reinforcement learning](/wiki/reinforcement_learning)
- [Vision-language model](/wiki/vision_language_model)
- [Isaac Lab](/wiki/isaac_lab)
- [Digital twin](/wiki/digital_twin)
- [Artificial intelligence in China](/wiki/china_ai)

## References

1. [Baidu Baike, "Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd."](https://baike.baidu.com/en/item/Beijing%20Humanoid%20Robot%20Innovation%20Center%20Co.,%20Ltd./34085)
2. [CMRA, "Overview of the latest development of the six major humanoid robot innovation centers in China."](https://cnmra.com/overview-of-the-latest-development-of-the-six-major-humanoid-robot-innovation-centers-in-china/)
3. [Beijing Government, "Beijing Establishes Humanoid Robot Innovation Center," November 2023.](https://english.beijing.gov.cn/latest/news/202311/t20231105_3295012.html)
4. [South China Morning Post, "China's humanoid robot half marathon winner wants to be 'Android' of robotics," 21 April 2025.](https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3307165/chinas-humanoid-robot-half-marathon-winner-wants-be-android-robotics)
5. [South China Morning Post, "China's humanoid robot half-marathon puts technology's limits on public display," April 2025.](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3307470/chinas-humanoid-robot-half-marathon-puts-technologys-limits-public-display)
6. [Global Times, "Beijing hosts world's first humanoid robot half-marathon; Home-developed Tien Kung Ultra crowned champion," 19 April 2025.](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202504/1332429.shtml)
7. Xinhua, "Xinhua Headlines: Ready, set, robot! Beijing hosts world's first humanoid half marathon," 19 April 2025.
8. [CGTN, "'Tiangong Ultra' wins world's first-ever humanoid robot half marathon in Beijing," 19 April 2025.](https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-04-19/-Tiangong-Ultra-wins-world-s-first-ever-humanoid-robot-half-marathon-1CHdanwJVzG/p.html)
9. [ECNS, "Tien Kung Ultra wins champion in humanoid robots half-marathon," 21 April 2025.](https://www.ecns.cn/hd/2025-04-21/detail-iheqrhkv9488519.shtml)
10. CGTN, "China releases world's first electric running humanoid robot 'Tiangong'," 28 April 2024.
11. Global Times, "Chinese company unveils humanoid running robot with large-scale commercial potential," April 2024.
12. Global Times, "World's first electric running humanoid robot 'Tiangong' open sourced, to accelerate robots into human life," November 2024.
13. [Xinhua, "World's first universal embodied AI platform launched in Beijing," 13 March 2025.](https://english.news.cn/20250313/e08556d55e6c49ffbe9bfb863aa85278/c.html)
14. [Korea Times, "China's Unitree, X-Humanoid top medal total in the world's first humanoid robot games," 19 August 2025.](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/world/20250819/chinas-unitree-x-humanoid-top-medal-total-in-the-worlds-first-humanoid-robot-games)
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16. [PR Newswire, "X-Humanoid Showcases Fully Autonomous and More Useful Robotics Solutions at CES 2026."](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/x-humanoid-showcases-fully-autonomous-and-more-useful-robotics-solutions-at-ces-2026-302656056.html)
17. [Caixin Global, "Beijing Humanoid Robotics Hub Raises $100 Million in First Funding Round," 4 February 2026.](https://www.caixinglobal.com/2026-02-04/beijing-humanoid-robotics-hub-raises-100-million-in-first-funding-round-102411145.html)
18. [The AI Insider, "China's X-Humanoid Raises $100M in First Funding Round," 5 February 2026.](https://theaiinsider.tech/2026/02/05/chinas-x-humanoid-raises-100m-in-first-funding-round/)
19. [Beijing Government, "Beijing's Humanoid Robots See Another Upgrade: New Generation General-Purpose Robot Tien Kung 3.0 Launched," 12 February 2026.](https://english.beijing.gov.cn/beijinginfo/sci/latesttrends/202602/t20260212_4511437.html)
20. Humanoids Daily, "Beijing's Newest Humanoid: Tiangong 3.0 Breaks Cover with Parkour and Open-Source Ambitions," February 2026.
21. [PR Newswire, "X-Humanoid Introduces Embodied Tien Kung 3.0, a More Open and Practical Humanoid Robotics Platform," 16 February 2026.](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/x-humanoid-introduces-embodied-tien-kung-3-0--a-more-open-and-practical-humanoid-robotics-platform-302688505.html)
22. [Interesting Engineering, "TienKung 3.0 humanoid robot achieves industry-first full-body control," February 2026.](https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/x-humanoid-robot-with-touch-motion-control)
23. [Interesting Engineering, "Tien Kung 3.0 humanoid wins China's Robot Warrior Challenge with zero human control," April 2026.](https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/china-tien-kung-3-0-humanoid-robot-challenge)
24. PR Newswire / Robotics Tomorrow, "X-Humanoid's Embodied Tien Kung 3.0 Wins Beijing Robot Warrior Challenge with Fully Autonomous Run," 20 April 2026.
25. [Interesting Engineering, "Marathon-winning Tiangong humanoid robot is working in factories," May 2025.](https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/chinas-tiangong-robot-displays-versatile-skills)
26. China Daily, "Riding AI uptrend, humanoid robotics taking a leap in Beijing," 19 June 2025.
27. OhSem, "New Breakthrough In Embodied Intelligence: X-Humanoid Wise KaiWu Agent Gives Robots Real Awareness And Real Capability," May 2026.
28. [Humanoid.guide, "Tien Kung 2.0 Humanoid Robot."](https://humanoid.guide/product/tien-kung-2-0/)
29. [Humanoid.guide, "Tien Kung 3.0 Humanoid Robot."](https://humanoid.guide/product/tien-kung-3-0/)
30. [Aparobot, "Tien Kung."](https://www.aparobot.com/robots/tien-kung)
31. [Robots International, "X-Humanoid."](https://www.robotsinternational.com/X-Humanoid.htm)
32. [Open-X-Humanoid GitHub organization.](https://github.com/Open-X-Humanoid)
33. [Open-X-Humanoid, "TienKung-Lab: Direct IsaacLab Workflow for Legged Robots," GitHub.](https://github.com/Open-X-Humanoid/TienKung-Lab)
34. [arXiv, "RoboMIND: Benchmark on Multi-embodiment Intelligence Normative Data for Robot Manipulation," arXiv:2412.13877, December 2024.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.13877)
35. [arXiv, "Pelican-VL 1.0: A Foundation Brain Model for Embodied Intelligence," arXiv:2511.00108, November 2025.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00108)
36. MERICS, "Embodied AI: China's ambitious path to transform its robotics industry," 2025.
37. [Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai), post announcing the TG-VLA framework and its HEX, HAF-VLA, and DSRL-DCT components, X, July 2026.](https://x.com/rohanpaul_ai/status/2073761486951031021)
38. [Shuanghao Bai, Meng Li, et al., "HEX: Humanoid-Aligned Experts for Cross-Embodiment Whole-Body Manipulation," arXiv:2604.07993, 2026.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07993)
39. [Open-X-Humanoid/HEX, "HEX is a whole-body vision-language-action framework for full-sized humanoid robots," GitHub.](https://github.com/Open-X-Humanoid/HEX)
40. ["HEX: Humanoid-Aligned Experts for Cross-Embodiment Whole-Body Manipulation," project page.](https://hex-humanoid.github.io/)
41. [arXiv, "Humanoid Everyday: A Comprehensive Robotic Dataset for Open-World Humanoid Manipulation," arXiv:2510.08807, 2025.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08807)
42. [arXiv, "AgiBot World Colosseo: A Large-scale Manipulation Platform for Scalable and Intelligent Embodied Systems," arXiv:2503.06669, 2025.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.06669)
43. [arXiv, "RoboCOIN: An Open-Sourced Bimanual Robotic Data Collection for Integrated Manipulation," arXiv:2511.17441, 2025.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17441)