Chongqing - Crowds packed shopping streets and museums across Chongqing during the May Day holiday, drawn by promotions, performances — and increasingly, robots.
The city’s 11-day holiday program, running from April 25 to May 5, features more than 700 consumption, cultural, and tourism events. Among them, a humanoid robot exhibition at the Chongqing Science and Technology Museum has emerged as a popular stop for families.
Inside the museum, visitors gathered around robot displays, watching them dance, respond to prompts, and generate AI drawings. Children moved quickly from one exhibit to another. Parents followed slowly, asking a different set of questions.
“What can it actually do?” one visitor asked. “And when can it be useful in real life?”
Among the crowd was Mr. Liu, who brought his 10-year-old son after noticing a surge of AI-themed holiday activities across the city. The boy, visibly excited, asked the staff how the robots moved and what kind of code powered them.
“I hope he keeps this interest,” Liu said. “It’s better for him to experience it directly.”
The excitement was real. So was the gap. While the displays drew steady attention, few conversations turned to pricing, procurement, or large-scale deployment. The machines performed well in controlled settings. Whether they could function reliably in daily life remained an open question.
That gap is what makes Chongqing worth watching.
Different humanoid robots are on display at the Chongqing Science and Technology Museum. (Photo/Yilin Luo)
From showcase to use case
In April, the city announced 29 “Robot+” application scenarios across manufacturing, public services, emergency response, and agriculture. The cases range from aerospace component assembly to community delivery robots and AI-powered medicine cabinets for elderly residents.
One such system is already being tested for seniors living alone. It can store medication, issue reminders, and alert family members or community workers if risks arise. For officials, these scenarios matter less for their novelty than for their structure: a defined task, a clear user group, and a potential path to repeat orders.
To accelerate that shift, the city says it will build platforms to connect suppliers with buyers, organize regular matchmaking events, and give priority support to selected products.
A medical robot takes blood pressure and then offers medical advice to an elderly lady in a Chongqing clinic. (Photo/China Daily)
Building an industry behind the scenes
Chongqing is also moving to build industrial capacity behind these applications.
In late March, Unitree Robotics signed an agreement to establish a Western innovation and operations centre in the city. The project includes an embodied-intelligence robotics lab, a quadruped robot R&D centre, a humanoid robot data collection hub, and manufacturing bases for both humanoid and quadruped robots.
Local authorities say they will support research in embodied AI algorithms, robot operating systems, and high-performance integrated joints, while accelerating localised mass production. The goal is to form a closed-loop system linking technology validation, standards, and data, application demonstration, and industrial services.
The local push comes alongside broader national efforts to standardise the sector. On February 28, China released its 2026 standard framework for humanoid robots and embodied intelligence — the first top-level framework covering the full industrial chain and lifecycle of the technology. More than 120 research institutes, companies, and industry users participated in its development.
The framework spans six areas, including basic standards, brain-like intelligence and computing, key components, complete systems, applications, as well as safety and ethics. Officials say it marks a new phase of standardised development for the industry.
From “can perform” to “can work”
The shift now underway is not about whether robots can perform, but whether they can deliver.
A widely watched humanoid robot half-marathon held in Beijing on April 19 drew more than 100 robot teams and 12,000 human runners. Organisers framed the event as a step toward moving robots from “being able to run and jump” to “being able to work and solve problems.”
That ambition reflects a broader industry challenge. Analysts say humanoid robots can already handle basic tasks such as carrying or inspection, but still face limitations in speed, precision, and reliability. Moving from demonstration to deployment will require advances in software, data systems, and energy efficiency.
These constraints are echoed in Chongqing’s own priorities, which focus on core algorithms, operating systems, key components, and local manufacturing capacity.
A holiday, and a test
For Chongqing, the May Day holiday is more than a consumption peak. It is a real-world test.
With heavy foot traffic, dense public-service demand, and a strong manufacturing base, the city provides a rare environment to observe how robots perform outside controlled settings.
If humanoid machines can move from exhibitions into communities, campuses, and production lines here, the industry may begin to scale. If not, the gap between public fascination and practical use will remain.
(Yilin Luo, as an intern, also contributed to the report. )