Embodied intelligence is quickly finding its way into our daily routines, handling tasks like sweeping floors, wiping windows, folding laundry, and brewing coffee. Behind these dexterous "smart hands" lies a massive amount of training data. Where does all this information come from, and could an average person take part in collecting it?

By recording household chores, a local resident in Tai'an City, Shandong Province, has found a new way to earn an income from home. The reporter visited Taishan District and arrived just in time for a unique community workshop. This session, organized by Shandong Digital Harvest Valley and the local human resources department, was designed to train data collectors, with participants drawn from the local population. Attendees paid close attention as they learned how to operate equipment and manage the finer points of the collection process. Since June, these training programs have reached over a dozen communities through multiple rounds of sessions.

It was through this training that 46-year-old Chen Junxi became a home-based data collector for Shandong Digital Harvest Valley a month ago. Early each morning, Chen puts on a capture device and begins tackling chores like washing vegetables, cooking meals, and tidying up the house. All these daily activities are recorded and submitted to the company, where they are processed and annotated to become video materials for training robots. Over the past two years, Chen had to care for his elderly mother and couldn't take on outside work. Now he can "clock in" right at home with a decent income, and he has recommended this job to several relatives. Like Chen, more than 200 people in Taishan District are now engaged in this type of data collection, and this new neighborhood-friendly role is drawing growing attention and participation.

Typically, gathering robot training data takes place in laboratories or purpose-built facilities with professional staff. So why did Shandong Digital Harvest Valley choose to settle in a regular community and rely on residents for this work? The company's core business is supplying training data to artificial intelligence companies. From the start, they decided to focus on collecting data in real-world environments. After extensive research, they found Bocheng Community in Tai'an, which houses residents from eight surrounding villages, over 5,000 households, and more than 18,000 people, making it the largest resettlement community in Taishan District. The abundant workforce and varied real-life settings made it an ideal spot for the business, and the two sides quickly reached an agreement. In April, Shandong Digital Harvest Valley opened its doors in Bocheng Community. To speed up hiring, the human resources department used employment service stations to share openings and suggest candidates, while organizing site visits and technical training for interested residents. Once trained, the video footage collected by these workers is sent straight to the company, where specialists filter and annotate it, turning it into real-world behavioral data for robot training across various regions.

With the range of embodied intelligence applications expanding, demand for data keeps climbing, and home-based collection alone is no longer enough. What fresh opportunities will these new scenarios unlock? Qiu Wenjing, a 32-year-old mother, has worked as a home-based collector for nearly two months. Lately, she has taken on an additional role collecting data at a supermarket. After dropping her child off at school each day, she puts on the capture device and joins several neighbors to sort fruit, arrange products, and record restocking videos. Qiu explained that the local government helped the company coordinate with markets and pharmacies, so their video collection has now broadened beyond the home to surrounding businesses. In addition, Qiu's family has started expanding collection activities into rural areas. Wanglinpo Village is a traditional community that has developed rural tourism in recent years, setting up workshops for making tofu, steaming buns, and cooking pancakes. These days, skilled workers wear the capture devices while preparing traditional foods, recording their processes in real time. Starting next month, Shandong Digital Harvest Valley will add 2,000 more devices, which means 2,000 more people could find new digital jobs right in their own neighborhoods.