Live from WAIC 2026: Over 300 physical robots on display—embodied intelligence still lacks the massive real-world data needed to reach its 'GPT moment'

Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily, July 18 (Reporter Li Jiayi): From exhibits to colleagues—robots at WAIC 2026 have collectively 'started work.'

On July 17, the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference officially kicked off in Shanghai. Dozens of embodied intelligence robots were deployed across four venues—Shanghai Expo Exhibition Hall, Expo Center, Zhangjiang Science Hall, and Xuhui West Bund—to provide real-world services spanning traffic management, venue guidance, navigation assistance, and other diverse scenarios.

The embodied intelligence industry is undergoing a substantive transformation—from static displays on exhibition booths last year to full-scenario deployment this year—shifting from 'performing tricks' to 'getting real work done.'

▎When WAIC 2026 Robots Got a ‘Work Vibe’

Over the past couple of days, if you encountered a 'traffic officer' directing vehicles at an intersection near the Shanghai Expo Exhibition Hall—diligently working under 38°C heat—it was likely one of the traffic management robots officially 'on duty' during this year’s WAIC.

On the opening day of this year’s WAIC, humanoid traffic management robots officially began operations at key intersections surrounding the Expo Exhibition Hall. Jointly deployed by the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau Traffic Management Corps and Qingtian Zhixing Technology, these robots can accurately recognize traffic light signals, autonomously direct vehicle flow, and instantly issue voice alerts for violations such as e-bike riders not wearing helmets, vehicles stopping beyond stop lines, and pedestrians running red lights.

Beyond traffic management outside venues, Qingtian has jointly deployed a total of 60 robots—including models such as Yuanzheng A3 and Lingxi X2—at the four WAIC venues ('three locations, four halls': Pudong Expo Exhibition Hall, Expo Center, Zhangjiang Science Hall, and Xuhui West Bund)—to deliver public services including forum explanations and visitor navigation.

Walking into the exhibition hall, a reporter from Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily was struck by a strange sense of 'time travel,' as if stepping into the future—robot security personnel stood at ticket checkpoints, and yellow-vested robot guides moved through the halls. Last year, they were merely exhibits; this year, they’ve become official WAIC staff members.

“Last year, the robots in the exhibition area were mostly on static display. This year, all the robots are moving—that’s the most fundamental difference,” Li Haochen, head of the Embodied Intelligence Robot Exhibition, remarked to a reporter from The STAR Market Daily.

The year 2026 is widely regarded within the industry as the ‘Year One of Mass Production’ for embodied intelligence. What the market now demands is not ‘performance’ but practical capability—productive tools that can operate continuously and deliver reliably in workshops and warehouses. For the first time, this year’s conference elevated embodied intelligence to a core track alongside intelligent computing. The number of participating companies surged from over 80 last year to more than 200, with 208 embodied intelligence terminals and over 300 physical robots showcased simultaneously.

Upon entering the ‘Modern Era: City of Partners’ exhibition zone on the first floor of the Expo Pavilion, a reporter from The STAR Market Daily felt as though stepping into a futuristic city where humans and machines coexist. Across three scenarios—smart manufacturing, daily life, and entertainment—dozens of robots performed distinct roles: working in factories, preparing salads, demonstrating Chao-Shan Gongfu tea ceremonies, and even competing in table tennis—a vibrant and bustling scene.

The STAR Market Daily reporter observed that nearly every booth was surrounded by visitors, who curiously examined these ‘on-duty’ robots and frequently let out exclamations of amazement.

At the booth of Sharpa, a robotics company making its exhibition debut, a reporter from The STAR Market Daily witnessed a humanoid robot taking photos for attendees—retrieving the camera, adjusting its grip, aiming at the subject, pressing the shutter, ejecting the photo paper, and handing over the print—all executed seamlessly.

“What matters most for humanoid robots isn’t looking like a human, but working like one—they should adapt to human environments and use tools already designed for people,” Peng Bing, Marketing Director at Sharpa, told The STAR Market Daily. Instant cameras are ordinary consumer products readily available everywhere, yet they feature extremely small buttons, precise levers, and require a sequence of coordinated actions to print photos—tasks demanding the robot’s fingers perform complex maneuvers within a highly compact space.

Leaving the first-floor exhibition area, the reporter from The STAR Market Daily ascended to Hall H3—the dedicated pavilion for embodied intelligence robots—where companies such as Unitree Robotics, Agibot, and Fourier Intelligence gathered in full force. The hall buzzed with activity, each booth crowded with visitors seeking information or taking photos. The reporter’s strongest impression was that this year’s competition no longer centered on dancing or calligraphy, but on whether robots could generate real economic value in practical settings.

While navigating among the numerous booths in Hall H3, the reporter from The STAR Market Daily noticed that at the Ant Lingbo booth, many visitors were watching a robot skillfully retrieve medicine from shelves and package it—an action so practiced it resembled that of an experienced pharmacist.

According to on-site staff, this is a smart pharmacy jointly developed by Ant Lingbo and Guoda Drugstore. It is powered by a 'universal brain' that drives robots of different brands and configurations to handle the entire workflow—from order receipt and intelligent sorting to product delivery. The solution has already been deployed at Guoda Drugstore’s Shanghai outlets, requiring no dedicated store modifications; the robots can directly operate within existing retail environments and assist pharmacists with sorting tasks during overnight shifts and other scenarios.

Not far away was the Zhiyuan Robotics exhibition area, surrounded by crowds several layers deep. <

The STAR Market Daily> reporters learned on-site that on the first day of WAIC, Zhiyuan unveiled five new products, including the Yuanzheng A3 Ultra, Jingling G2 Max, Lingxi X2 EDU Edition, Linjiedian OmniHand 3 Ultra-M, and Kuto’s world’s first riding robot. Among them, the Yuanzheng A3 Ultra—named a 'Star Exhibit' of WAIC—features an embodied processor (700 TOPS), LiDAR, multi-position fisheye cameras, and notably includes a high-degree-of-freedom dexterous hand.

▎When Will Embodied Intelligence Reach Its 'GPT Moment'?

In the first half of 2026, nearly RMB 44 billion flowed into China’s embodied intelligence sector, with more than half directed toward 'brain-focused' companies.

During The STAR Market Daily reporters’ visit to the exhibition, it was evident that this year’s robots have become remarkably agile—their limbs can walk, run, grasp, and carry objects with ease. However, the true determinant of how far robots can go—their 'brain,' or their ability to understand the complex physical world and make autonomous decisions—remains constrained by bottlenecks in data and algorithms.

Data shows that as of early 2026, the total volume of high-quality real-world physical interaction data globally amounted to only about 500,000 hours—less than one twenty-thousandth of the training data used for large language models.

“There is strong consensus this year that we need vastly more data,” emphasized Yao Maoqing, Partner, Senior Vice President, and President of Embodied Intelligence Business at Zhiyuan, in an interview with The STAR Market Daily and other media outlets. “To achieve advanced intelligence, the scale of real-world physical data must reach the hundreds of millions of hours. Only then—far exceeding current data volumes—can we realize what is referred to as the 'GPT moment' for the physical world.”

Yao Maoqing further explained that embodied intelligence involves extensive physical interactions, requiring highly accurate prediction and judgment of physical laws, thus demanding extremely high precision in describing the state of the real world. Achieving data volumes on the order of hundreds of millions of hours is methodologically clear to everyone, but the greatest challenge lies in the actual operational implementation—it is a systemic undertaking requiring mobilization across society.

Therefore, Zhiyuan is aggressively advancing data accumulation this year, covering both collection and post-processing governance, with particular emphasis on human-centric, multi-modal data. 'This data must undergo cleaning, annotation, spatial trajectory extraction, and other processing before it can be mapped onto robots for operational training,' Yao Maoqing revealed. 'Zhiyuan’s target this year is to approach 10 million hours of data, and progress is steadily underway.'

Currently, most humanoid robots entering factories as 'workers' are effectively serving as 'paid interns.' Their real KPI is not how many screws they tighten, but rather the collection of high-quality embodied intelligence data.

From both inside and outside the WAIC 2026 exhibition, robot 'employment' is no longer just a concept—they are tightening screws in factories, picking medications in pharmacies, and directing traffic at intersections.

However, large-scale deployment still lacks that final push. Moreover, developing the 'brain' of robots requires massive amounts of real-world data for training.