China is promoting the development of a standard system for the human-shaped robot industry in the context of this technology being increasingly introduced into the real environment.
According to the draft guidelines of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China (MIIT), this country aims to build at least 100 important standards for humanoid robots by 2028. The draft was consulted with the public from August 25 to September 23.
The expected standards cover many areas, including competency testing and assessment methods, key technology and systems, platforms, application scenarios and safety management.
China also aims to have more than 200 businesses participate in promoting and applying these standards by 2028.
According to the draft, the humanoid robot is a generation of smart terminal devices controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), with a shape and capabilities similar to humans, and can automatically perform complex tasks.
Building common standards is considered necessary when the human-shaped robot industry is developing rapidly but still lacks unity in terms of terminology, interface, testing and evaluation methods.
The draft proposes to standardize the method of assessing robot capacity, and at the same time develop regulations on a unique identification code, encoding rules and a mechanism for identifying human-shaped robots.
In industrial production, the standards will also focus on the operating and environmental adaptation capabilities of robots, especially in structured or semi-structured environments.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the country has developed more than 400 human-shaped robot models, accounting for more than half of the total global number.
Standardization is also aimed at solving problems arising when robots are put into factories. Dust and reflected light can affect environmental recognition, while continuous operation requires robots to have high durability, heat management capabilities and suitable component lifespan.
In addition to technical requirements, the draft also mentions ethics and social impact, in which safety and ethics are placed along with efficiency and commercialization capacity.
