China Establishes Giant Training Bases to Advance Humanoid Robot Development

China is establishing large-scale humanoid robotics training bases across the country, aiming to accelerate the development of advanced humanoids. These facilities will put robots through varied scenarios and collect crucial data to support product development for manufacturers. This strategy positions China to outpace the United States in the emerging humanoid robot industry.

Credit: AGIBOT

Cities nationwide are opening these vast training bases, designed to address a current data shortage within China’s domestic industry. The centres will generate standardised, high-quality data at lower costs, unlike previous isolated data collection efforts that resulted in inconsistent quality.

The largest facility, located in Beijing’s Shijingshan district, covers an area of more than 10,000 square metres. This centre is projected to generate over 6 million data points annually, the local government announced on Thursday. It provides 16 specific training scenarios, including settings that mimic a manufacturing facility, a retail outlet, an elderly care centre, and a smart home.

Credit: AGIBOT

China and the United States are front-runners in the humanoid robot industry, which seeks to create humanlike robots capable of replacing human workers. These robots could function in diverse environments, from factory floors to nursing homes.

Chinese authorities are broadly fostering a world-leading humanoid robot industry. Domestic players are competing with American companies, such as Tesla’s Optimus, to commercially deploy robots.

In March, the Chinese government highlighted embodied intelligence as a key future industry for the first time. Embodied intelligence refers to artificial intelligence integrated into physical machinery, including robots.

China has hosted several high-profile events in recent months to showcase its robotics progress. Humanoids participated in a half-marathon, a kickboxing match, and a dance performance at the popular Spring Festival Gala.

Beijing also issued guidelines in late August for promoting the deployment of AI-powered devices across the economy. The guidelines set a target of raising the adoption level to over 90 per cent by 2030, with directives to ensure high-quality data supply and build national testing centres for AI applications.

Local governments have responded swiftly to this call, constructing their own training bases. The Beijing facility will collaborate with counterparts in provinces including Zhejiang, Shandong, Anhui, and Henan. Shanghai announced on Tuesday that a robot training base would begin field tests by the end of the month.

During the World Robot Conference in August, Beijing unveiled the world’s first full-service store dedicated to humanoid robots. China’s robotics market is projected to increase from USD 47 billion in 2024 to an estimated USD 108 billion by 2028, according to a Morgan Stanley report published in June.

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• China is establishing large humanoid robot training bases to accelerate development and generate standardised data.

• The largest facility in Beijing covers over 10,000 square metres and offers 16 training scenarios.

• These bases aim to address a data shortage, enabling China to compete with the United States in the humanoid robotics market.

Source: SCMP

AI Stan Lee Hologram Greets Fans at L.A. Comic Con

An artificial intelligence hologram of Marvel comic book superhero creator Stan Lee debuted at L.A. Comic Con, allowing fans to interact with the late legend. Lee, who died in 2018 at 95, appeared in holographic form, described as wearing a green sweater and tan pants against a bright blue screen.

Credit: Photo Courtesy of Steven Hong/ Proto Hologram

The hologram met fans of his characters, including Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor, in an enclosed booth at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Chris DeMoulin, chief executive of Comikaze Entertainment, which operates L.A. Comic Con, stated the initiative aims to extend Lee’s legacy.

Mr. DeMoulin conceived the idea about six months prior, envisioning an avatar of Lee as an “entry point for fans, old and new, into the Marvel universe”. This project was a collaboration between Proto Hologram and Hyperreal.

Proto Hologram, a company known for its holographic technology used in malls to promote films such as “The Conjuring” and “A Minecraft Movie,” partnered with Hyperreal, an artificial intelligence firm specialising in realistic digital humans. The hologram was trained using Lee’s numerous appearances on red carpets and at fan conventions.

George Johnson of Mammoth Vision explained that technological guardrails were implemented to ensure the avatar’s authenticity. “This avatar will never say something that Stan didn’t say,” Mr. DeMoulin added, “It will never have a point of view about Marvel or the stories or Stan’s role in them that hasn’t come directly from something Stan has said.”

Credit: Photo Courtesy of Steven Hong/ Proto Hologram

Johnson further elaborated, saying, “We take Stan Lee’s words and import them into the model and then we put rails on the side of it, so he doesn’t go off and talk about things that Stan wouldn’t have said.” Fans who never met Lee in person might recognise him from his cameo appearances in every live-action Marvel movie during his lifetime.

During a demonstration on Friday, the holographic Lee discussed his affection for fan conventions. “My favorite thing about being at a comic convention is getting to meet all the amazing fans and hearing their stories about how Marvel has impacted their lives,” Lee stated in the late actor's voice.

However, not everyone welcomed Lee’s posthumous appearance at the convention. Some commenters on Reddit voiced criticism regarding the Stan Lee Experience. One commenter, RGCBlade, wrote, “Even in death, they won’t let the guy rest. It’s all pretty dystopian.”

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• An AI hologram of Marvel creator Stan Lee debuted at L.A. Comic Con.

• The hologram allows fans to interact with Lee, who died in 2018 at 95, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

• Comikaze Entertainment, Proto Hologram, Hyperreal, and Mammoth Vision collaborated on the project.

Source: REUTERS

Honor, Qualcomm Partner to Advance On-Device AI in Magic8 Smartphones

Honor has announced its upcoming Magic8 family of smartphones will feature the new fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite chipsets. This announcement occurred during the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit 2025, highlighting Honor’s dedication to defining artificial intelligence capabilities in smartphones.

Credit: HONOR

The partnership with Qualcomm aims to provide consumers with enhanced interactions, offering benefits in computing power, storage, and battery consumption. A key focus is efficiency, not only in hardware and software but also in the user experience.

The integration of large model AI features on smartphones previously required cloud connections. In 2025, there is a push to introduce as much processing as possible directly on the device, improving data usage efficiency and reducing energy requirements.

AI models are inherently large, making their size reduction crucial for smartphone memory and storage optimisation. Honor is introducing low-bit quantisation technology in the Magic8 series to address this challenge.

This compression technology significantly reduces AI model size, with Honor demonstrating a 4.4 GB model shrinking to 1.02 GB. This allows for more efficient calculations, leading to faster speeds, lower power consumption, and enhanced user privacy through on-device processing.

However, quantisation presents a potential trade-off in accuracy, which can impact the reliability of results. Himanshu Bamoria of Athina AI noted that for many common use cases, the loss of accuracy has been negligible.

Bamoria stated, "Surprisingly, for many common use cases, the loss was negligible. The quantized models maintained competitive accuracy across benchmarks like language understanding and reasoning tasks."

He added, "This suggests that, for a vast range of applications, the extra computational burden of high-precision models might not be justified."

Credit: HONOR

The Magic8 series will also feature Next-Generation Hybrid Retrieval Technology for search functionalities. This system combines traditional keyword-based search with semantic search, which focuses on meaning rather than exact matches.

Meilisearch's Ilia Markov pointed out the technical complexity of integrating multiple search algorithms required for hybrid search. He noted, "Hybrid search requires integrating multiple search algorithms (e.g., semantic search using dense embeddings). This integration can be technically complex and requires deep technical understanding."

Balancing these two search approaches is crucial to deliver more relevant results to consumers, which will likely be presented in a single, merged list. Honor aims to balance user trust and accuracy in its implementation.

A practical application of these local models is Magic Colour, enabling users to re-style photos or videos with a single natural-language prompt. Honor has provided examples of prompts that utilize various new features, such as "Save the picture as a La La Land Colour template" for photo restyling and "Help me find the photos I took at the Forbidden City" for enhanced search capabilities.

Another practical application is the AI-powered Super Sampler, primarily for gaming, which balances the GPU and NPU. This “dual engine” approach upscales low-resolution games running at lower frame rates to HD resolution at up to 120 FPS.

This dual engine enhances visual quality while offering faster processing and lower power requirements compared to GPU-only upscaling techniques. Through its partnership with Qualcomm, Honor is reworking the core engineering of its smartphones, focusing on efficient, personalised, and private AI experiences for consumers.

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• Honor’s Magic8 smartphone series will feature new fifth-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite chipsets.

• The devices will utilise low-bit quantisation technology to reduce AI model sizes for enhanced efficiency and privacy.

• Next-Generation Hybrid Retrieval Technology will combine keyword-based and semantic search for improved results.

Source: FORBES