Chinese street dancer Wu Yufei, 27 years old, from Sichuan, and his robot "colleagues" entered the final round of the "America's Got Talent - AGT" program, a stage he has dreamed of reaching for many years.
As a long-time science fiction enthusiast, Wu told AFP that dancing with robots in the Homies group gives him a "very wonderful feeling". After months of training, the robots are no longer just "cool, soulless machines" to him.
There is almost a kind of team spirit there," Wu shared, as he and the human-shaped robot group manufactured by China's Unitree Group prepare for the AGT final night this week.
Jumping robots have become a fever in China after the resounding performance of Unitree robot at the 2026 annual Spring Gala, the television program with the largest viewership in this country. Since then, businesses and event organizers across the country have flocked to hire robots to perform to attract customers.
According to industry insiders, training robots to dance requires recording sophisticated human movements, running simulations on computers and then transferring the results to robots.
While the Chinese public mainly sees robot dance as entertainment, industry insiders consider this an opportunity to show off the design, capabilities and reliability of robots. "That's why everyone wants to perform such high-skill dances," said Guo Renjie, founder and CEO of robot engineering company Zeroth.
A recent report by Morgan Stanley forecasts that the Chinese humanoid robot market could reach a value of 2 billion USD this year. Accounting for more than 97% of the global number of humanoid robots shipped in the first half of 2026, this Chinese industry also faces increasing scrutiny from investors and policymakers.
Many companies are struggling to find commercially feasible applications for humanoid robots outside the entertainment industry. Leaders of humanoid robot companies publicly admit that this industry is still many years away from its own "ChatGPT moment" - the time robots become useful to ordinary people.
Unitree had a booming debut on the Shanghai stock exchange in August, jumping 629% in the first trading session, but the company's market capitalization since then has decreased by about half compared to the peak.
