Magiclab Robotics Technology showcases an advanced humanoid robot model at the Appliance & Electronics World Expo, in Shanghai, on March 15, 2026. [Photo/VCG]

In response to the central government's guideline on developing the intelligent economy during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–30) period, plans and strategic partnerships were unveiled on Friday in Shanghai, marking efforts to build a complete ecosystem for embodied intelligent brain technology by research institutions, enterprises and local governments.

"The decision to focus on embodied intelligent brains, aimed at addressing the bottleneck in the existing embodied intelligence industry caused by a lack of 'brains', is an active response to the national strategy of building a modern industrial system and strengthening the core competitiveness of artificial intelligence," said Wu Guogang, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's department of electronic information, during a conference on embodied intelligent brain technology ecosystem held in Shanghai on Friday.

"Top talent from industry, academia, research and application will jointly explore innovative collaboration across the ecosystem to promote the deep integration of the innovation, industry, capital and talent chains," Wu said.

"The biggest difference between embodied intelligence and artificial intelligence is based on the former is a comprehensive and systematic integration of conventional software and non-physical hardware, which featured with a physical body, intelligence and the capability of environmental perception," said Song Haitao, dean and president of Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Research Institute during his presentation on behalf of the humanoid robot AI hardware and software ecosystem integration working group.

According to Song, the working group has proposed building an ecosystem with a complete industrial chain, including domestically made chips, algorithms, systems and application scenarios.

"The goal is to establish 50 core ecosystem partners, complete more than five national and industry-wide standards and create five application scenarios that are replicable and scalable. Through the development of the embodied intelligence industry, we hope to contribute China's expertise to the world by building a complete and collaborative ecosystem," Song said.

Standardization work on humanoid robot AI hardware and software ecosystem collaboration was officially launched during the conference.

In addition, the event also saw the launch of a plan for the co-development of a global embodied intelligent brain ecosystem, with the first batch of strategic ecosystem partners signing agreements.

The conference also unveiled a plan to build an embodied intelligent brain research institute, marking a systematic upgrade of China's development in this field from technology research and development to industrial implementation, and further toward the creation of a full ecosystem.