China to deploy humanoid robot for patrolling at the Vietnam border

China has planned to deploy humanoid robots at its border with Vietnam for patrolling and logistics purposes. UBTECH Robotics Corp, a Shenzhen-based company, has won a $37 million contract to deploy its Walker S2 robot starting this month. This will mark the first large-scale deployment of the robots. These robots are industrial-grade humanoid machines designed for works like lifting, patrolling, guiding travellers, managing crowd flow, etc. They will reportedly be placed in Fangchenggang in a coastal city in Guangxi near Vietnam, where cargoes, trucks, coaches and traffic move abundantly.

UB Tech's Walker S2 robots

These robots are adult-sized human robots with legs, arms and torso, a replica of human anatomy. It uses BrainNet 2.0, a dual-loop AI architecture developed by UB Tech that supports multimodal reasoning, allowing autonomous control and decision making. They can move wherever a human can go. These robots are capable of autonomous battery swapping, without any human assistance. It has a dual battery switching design, which helps it monitor its own battery while in a swapping station. These can bend like125° angle and handle 15kg of weight within a 0-1.8 m workspace. It has an RGB binocular stereo vision, which allows it to achieve "human-eye" like precision. To maintain course and avoid collision, it also has depth sensors and force feedback in its joints to monitor nearby movements.

China's push for Humanoid Robots

UB Tech wants to build 5,000 units of humanoid robots by the end of 2026 and 10,000 units by 2027. These units are planned to be deployed in automotive manufacturing, smart factories, logistics hubs and data collection centres. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology opened a consultation in 2024 to make industry rules for humanoid robots. China is treating them like a strategic business sector. In Shijingshan District, it has opened a robot training centre has been opened to gather data on their performance efficiency.

However, China's economic planners have warned against over-promising and over-building, as the technology is in its infancy and white hat hackers have warned about the vulnerability in building and deploying AI systems. One word command could turn them into a Trojan horse.