From Industrial Robots to Humanoid Robots: Zoomlion Showcases Achievements at the World Robot Conference   The 2025 World Robot Conference was held in Beijing from August 8 to 12. Under the theme "Making Robots Smarter, Making Embodied Intelligence More Intelligent," this year's conference brought together the world's top expertise and cutting-edge technologies in the robotics field. As a global leader in equipment manufacturing, Zoomlion shared with attending guests, from the comprehensive perspective of intelligent manufacturing and intelligent robot R&D, the application and implementation of industrial robots and humanoid robots in manufacturing, fully presenting the development from "environment-adapting robots" to "robots adapting to the environment," showcasing Zoomlion's latest achievements in embodied-intelligence humanoid robots as well as its future plans in intelligent manufacturing, and providing a new model for the intelligent transformation of manufacturing.  

▲Zeng Guang, General Manager of Zoomlion's Zhongke Yungu, attended the 2025 World Robot Conference and delivered a keynote speech  

The main forum of the 2025 World Robot Conference was divided into three chapters: "Industrial Development, Innovative Applications, and Technology Integration." Notably, among the keynote speeches at this forum, Zoomlion was the only complete-machine enterprise already listed on the A-share market, and the only Chinese company in the Innovative Applications chapter.  

Zeng Guang, General Manager of Zoomlion's Zhongke Yungu, introduced that Zoomlion is one of the earliest users in the construction machinery industry to apply robotics technology. As early as 2006, Zoomlion's crane machinery factory took the lead in introducing programmable industrial robotic arms, mainly for welding operations on crane components.  

Starting in 2019, Zoomlion began large-scale use of adaptive robots with perception and mobility capabilities, mainly robotic arms with visual and force-tactile recognition, AMR autonomous mobile robots, and the like. At the Zoomlion Smart Industrial City in Changsha, Hunan, more than 300 intelligent manufacturing production lines have been integrated and built, using over 2,000 industrial robots. From steel plate warehousing to outbound delivery, and then to blanking, welding, machining, coating, and final assembly, the entire process achieves full-lifecycle traceability and scheduling through QR codes.  

"The thousands of robots throughout the factory are like a symphony orchestra: each musician can play different notes in different pieces, while the orchestra conductor uniformly directs and schedules them. The musician is the adaptive robot, and the conductor is the AI industrial internet platform. The factory can switch at any time to produce products of different models, truly achieving 'production on demand and flexible response.' This is the world's first realization of ultra-large-scale agile manufacturing of heavy equipment in multiple varieties and small batches, with adaptive multi-stage production processes, diversified processing objects, and executable multi-path process routes," Zeng Guang introduced.  

▲Intelligent manufacturing at the Earthmoving Machinery Park of Zoomlion Smart Industrial City  

In 2024, Zoomlion began exploring the use of embodied-intelligence humanoid robots. To date, the company has developed three humanoid robots, including two wheeled versions and one bipedal version.

▲Zoomlion has currently developed three humanoid robots  

Zoomlion currently has dozens of humanoid robots working in its factories, conducting pilots in machining, logistics, assembly, quality inspection, and other stages. In the logistics stage, they can transport materials within the factory, load and unload for the assembly stage, and simultaneously perform assembly and pre-assembly of components; in the quality inspection stage, they can use their onboard vision systems and specialized inspection equipment to inspect components.

▲Zoomlion's self-developed humanoid robot working on an assembly line  

At the same time, Zoomlion has built a humanoid robot training ground with nearly one hundred workstations to carry out large-scale data collection; it has also created the Zhongke Yungu embodied intelligence platform, which includes a cloud-based super-brain, end-to-end algorithm models for the large and small brains, and a complete toolchain from data collection, processing, and annotation to model training, evaluation, and inference deployment, connecting all industrial robots and humanoid robots to ensure the robots' self-evolution and closed-loop operation.    

▲Zhongke Yungu Embodied Intelligence Operations Center of Zoomlion  

In his speech, Zeng Guang further elaborated on Zoomlion's vision for the future factory: through the co-evolution of software and hardware, a new production model will be formed, with industrial robots and humanoid robots working collaboratively in clusters, evolving from today's ultra-large-scale agile manufacturing of multiple varieties and small batches to future single-piece personalized customization, creating a new type of smart factory that is self-perceiving, self-adapting, and self-deciding.  

Humanoid robots entering factories is by no means simply converting traditional manual operation modes directly into robot execution. This transformation requires rethinking and optimizing manufacturing processes and corresponding management systems based on the unique attributes of humanoid robots. Specifically, this means advancing automation on the foundation of advanced processes, achieving digital transformation within the framework of lean production, and moving toward the intelligent stage under a sound data governance mechanism. Industrial robots and humanoid robots are not in a simple mutually substitutive relationship; rather, guided by the core goals of manufacturing—improving quality, enhancing efficiency, reducing costs, and lowering inventory—they should build a model of collaborative progress and organic integration.  

Against the backdrop of the country listing embodied intelligence as a key direction for future industries, Zoomlion's strategic layout is highly aligned with national priorities. In the future, the company will continue to integrate the industrial internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics technologies, promote the clustered collaborative operation of industrial robots and humanoid robots, expand the new boundaries of intelligent manufacturing, build the "third growth curve" of future industries, and reshape the development paradigm for the construction machinery industry and even China's manufacturing sector.