At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), a desktop intelligent companion robot called "Xiaobai," developed by Shanghai-based Huihua Intelligent Technology, was selected as a major annual achievement of Pudong's AI industry, becoming a benchmark result in the silver economy embodied intelligence and home AI healthcare sectors.
Jia Xuefeng, founder of Huihua Intelligent Technology, said that from software algorithms to hardware, the industry chain in Zhangjiang, Pudong, is very rich, and a robot product can be assembled without leaving Zhangjiang. As a globally watched window for industrial innovation, WAIC brought a group of mature embodied intelligence solutions from Pudong onto the same stage. As industry trends become clearer, there is a greater need to put real scenarios and real industry problems on the table and verify the answers in actual settings. In October, the Global Developer Pioneer Summit (GDPS) and the International Embodied Intelligence Skills Competition will also be held in Pudong as a relay event. From "seeing the future" to "building the future," Pudong already has a relatively solid foundation, with the industry scale expanding, key links clustering, and innovation capacity strengthening, while the supply chain is moving from "enterprise clustering" toward "collaborative supply." In Pudong, developers can more easily find technology and complete verification faster, while suppliers can more easily find developers and discover real demand, driving embodied intelligence from single-point innovation toward collaborative development and large-scale application.
Pudong builds a complete industrial foundation for embodied intelligence
During the National Day holiday, a group of "Pudong-made" robots were hard at work. Inside Hengqin Chimelong Spaceship Park, more than 300 robots from AgiBot's full series were regularly on duty at more than 100 interactive experience points, covering seven core scenarios including cultural entertainment and commercial performances, science popularization and study tours, guide and shopping guidance, service retail stations, intelligent companion tours, hotel scenarios, and sports competitions. In Shanghai, Qiyuan Robot's authorized experience store began its first batch of deliveries on the first day of the National Day holiday. Qiyuan Xinchuang is a key artificial intelligence project in Shanghai. This year it has landed in Zhangjiang Robot Valley and established a humanoid robot research and industrialization headquarters. According to the plan, this new embodied intelligence industrial headquarters will continue to invest large amounts of research and development expenses over the next three years, build a fully self-developed Primemind foundation model, and construct a product design innovation center, launching no fewer than two new consumer-grade robots each year. A user who purchased a humanoid robot said that robots have already become household helpers in the details of daily life. In 565 communities across 185 cities nationwide, Huihua Intelligent's companion robot products have entered ordinary households, with a monthly active rate of 92%. When robots take off their performance cloak and enter work scenarios, the embodied intelligence industry truly begins to mature. As Peng Zhihui, product experience officer at Qiyuan Robot, said, what they deliver is not just a robot, but the beginning of it truly entering users' lives. They will continue to learn from every use and every piece of user feedback, making the robot smarter and more understanding of life.
Behind robots being able to truly work, a sufficiently large industrial scale is needed as the foundation and support. The latest statistics from the district science and economic commission show that in 2025, Pudong's above-scale artificial intelligence industry scale reached 198.2 billion yuan, gathering nearly 1,800 related enterprises and more than 800 vertical model enterprises. As of now, Pudong has more than 150 embodied intelligence enterprises, with more than 30 humanoid robot innovation products, and has formed a batch of innovative achievements in vertical models, intelligent terminals, intelligent chips, and other directions. In addition, the brain, chips, perception, control, body, and application scenarios required by an embodied intelligent robot all have corresponding industrial foundations in Pudong.
Building an open and collaborative ecosystem and truly opening the industry chain to developers
To make robots truly serve thousands of industries and households, it is necessary to build an open and collaborative industrial ecosystem. Relying on international exhibition platforms such as WAIC and the East Expo, Huihua Intelligent, which focuses on the companion robot niche, plans overseas expansion in the second half of 2026. Especially in product localization, the company continues to deepen research and development in multilingual and multi-dialect technologies, having supported 202 domestic dialects and completed adaptation for multiple cross-border languages, precisely matching domestic and international user habits. At the same time, how to continuously accelerate iteration of its self-developed large model has become the breakthrough point Huihua Intelligent cares about most. Since the beginning of this year, consumer searches for elderly companion robots have continued to rise, and Pudong has provided a very good "experimental field." It is reported that with support from relevant Pudong departments, Huihua Intelligent participated in the "Zhangjiang AI Town - New Lifestyle Demonstration Community for Elderly Care" project, and the first batch has deployed more than 40 products in the area. Huihua Intelligent said it hopes to extend AI capabilities from a single robot terminal to whole-home family intelligent perception, risk warning, and multi-party collaborative service systems, comprehensively safeguarding the physical and mental health of elderly people. Based on this, the company strives to form a set of standards that can be replicated, promoted, and comprehensively adapted to modern family elderly care needs.
From products to standards, this is essentially a closed loop for the healthy development of the embodied intelligence industry. In September, the world's first all-category high-quality physical AI data crowdsourcing service platform, "Mifengpai," was released in Pudong. "Mifengpai" was launched by Pudong embodied intelligence enterprise Mifeng Technology and opens physical AI data collection tasks to the public. Users receive data collection tasks through the Mifengpai app, wear MEgo devices to complete specified operations in real scenarios such as retail, warehousing, manufacturing, and homes, and after passing validity checks can become a "robot trainer," thereby promoting the physical AI data production model into an era of "mass data collection." In addition, the Shanghai Humanoid Robot Pilot Testing Service Platform and the Shanghai Electric Pilot Testing Base have both been put into operation in Pudong, and the Shanghai Electric Embodied Robot Mass Production Base is accelerating construction. At the same time, Pudong will build a Robot Avenue in the core area of Zhangjiang Robot Valley, presenting functional scenarios where the park is the exhibition area, the scene is the application, and life is the experience, building an industrial ecosystem pattern led by complete machines, supported by platforms, and integrated with the ecosystem.
Pudong is not simply pursuing a "complete industry chain," but hopes to further organize Pudong's nearly 1,800 artificial intelligence enterprises, more than 150 embodied intelligence enterprises, 137,000 intelligent computing cards, and industrial resources such as pilot testing and mass production into supply chain and innovation service capabilities that developers can directly access.
Text: Yang Zhenying. Images provided by: Huihua Intelligent, AgiBot, Qiyuan Robot, Zhangjiang Group. Editor: Shi Fengyi.