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The Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (BHRIC; Chinese: 北京人形机器人创新中心), also registered as Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics Co., Ltd. and commercially branded as X-Humanoid, is a Chinese national research entity specializing in embodied AI and general-purpose humanoid robot development. Founded on November 2, 2023 in Beijing's Yizhuang district (Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, or E-Town), it was China's first provincial humanoid robot innovation platform and was elevated in October 2024 to the National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center, one of two such national-level humanoid centers in China alongside Shanghai's OpenLoong initiative.[1][2]
The center is best known for its Tiangong (天工, also romanized Tien Kung) series of full-size bipedal humanoid robots, the Tian Yi 2.0 wheeled humanoid platform, and the Huisi Kaiwu (慧思开物) universal embodied intelligence platform. Tiangong Ultra won the world's first humanoid robot half marathon in April 2025, and Tiangong 3.0 won the inaugural Beijing Yizhuang Robot Warrior Challenge in April 2026, both held in the same district where the center is headquartered.[3][4]
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Chinese name | 北京人形机器人创新中心 |
| Founded | November 2, 2023 |
| Headquarters | Yizhuang (E-Town), Beijing |
| Brand | X-Humanoid |
| CEO | Xiong Youjun |
| Registered capital | 460 million yuan (May 2025) |
| National status | National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center (Oct 2024) |
| Key shareholders | Xiaomi Robotics, UBTECH, Jingcheng Machinery and Electronics, Beijing Yizhuang Robot Technology Industry Development |
| Flagship product | Tiangong / Tien Kung humanoid series |
| First funding round | ~$100 million (about 700 million yuan), February 2026 |
The Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics Co., Ltd. was established on November 2, 2023 as part of China's national strategy to accelerate humanoid robot development. It was the country's first provincial-level humanoid robot innovation center, jointly sponsored by the Beijing Municipal Government and enterprises across the robot, components, and large model value chain.[1]
The principal partners are Xiaomi Robotics, UBTECH Robotics, Jingcheng Machinery and Electronics (Beijing City Electric Machinery), and the Beijing Yizhuang Robot Technology Industry Development Company, with technical participation from the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.[2] At founding, registered capital was 300 million yuan; it rose to 350 million yuan later in November 2023 when Beijing Yizhuang Robot Technology Industry Development joined, and reached 460 million yuan in May 2025.[1]
In April 2024, the center unveiled the first generation of Tiangong on stage at a Beijing E-Town event as the world's first full-size purely electric-driven humanoid robot capable of running. The initial version moved at around 6 km/h.[5] An upgraded version later in 2024 doubled that to roughly 12 km/h, with stable cruising around 10 km/h.[6]
On October 24, 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) approved the center's elevation to a National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center, placing it alongside the Shanghai center as one of two national-level humanoid platforms in China.[2] In November 2024, the center released the full Tiangong hardware design package as open source, including mechanical schematics, control algorithms, and a simulation environment.[7]
In March 2025, it launched the Huisi Kaiwu universal embodied intelligence platform, described in Chinese state media as the world's first universal embodied AI platform supporting multiple robot bodies and task scenarios.[8] A month later, on April 19, 2025, the Tiangong Ultra variant ran the 21-kilometer Beijing E-Town humanoid half marathon in roughly 2 hours 40 minutes, finishing first against 20 competing teams including Unitree's G1, Leju's Kuavo, and Noetix's N2.[9][10]
On February 10, 2026, the center officially unveiled the Embodied Tiangong 3.0 (Embodied Tien Kung 3.0), with a public press release the following week on February 16. Days before the launch, X-Humanoid closed its first external funding round at about 700 million yuan (around $100 million).[11][12] The Tiangong 3.0 launch was accompanied by an expanded open-source release covering hardware blueprints, the Pelican-VL vision language model, the RoboMIND teleoperation dataset, the world model, motion control framework, training toolchains, and the ArtVIP simulation asset library.[13][14]
In April 2026 the center won the inaugural Beijing Yizhuang Robot Warrior Challenge on April 18. Tiangong 3.0 completed obstacle, pendulum, and barrier-breaching tasks fully autonomously without teleoperation or pre-recorded scripts, earning the highest score and the Warrior Intelligent Mobility Award.[4]
The BHRIC is jointly built by the Beijing municipal government, MIIT, and a consortium of robotics enterprises.
| Shareholder / partner | Role |
|---|---|
| Xiaomi Robotics | Complete robot systems and consumer-robotics expertise |
| UBTECH Robotics | Humanoid robot OEM partner |
| Jingcheng Machinery and Electronics | Industrial automation, core mechanical components |
| Beijing Yizhuang Robot Technology Industry Development | State-backed industrial fund and zone operator |
| Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences | Algorithm and embodied AI research input |
| MIIT and Beijing Municipal Government | National and regional oversight (national designation Oct 2024) |
Xiong Youjun serves as CEO. He is a well-known figure in Chinese humanoid robotics and has been a public spokesperson at events including the World Robot Conference and the Boao Forum.[15]
The Tiangong line is the center's flagship full-size bipedal humanoid platform. The Chinese name 天工 references the Ming-dynasty technical encyclopedia Tiangong Kaiwu, a nod to Chinese craft tradition.
| Model | Launch | Height | Weight | Top speed | Notable capabilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiangong 1.0 | April 27, 2024 | 1.63 m | 43 kg | ~6 km/h | First full-size pure-electric humanoid to run on stage; visual recognition, voice interaction, object handling[5] |
| Tiangong 2.0 | Late 2024 | 1.63 m | ~43 kg | ~12 km/h | Doubled running speed; stable cruise around 10 km/h; first to be fully open sourced (Nov 2024)[6][7] |
| Tiangong Ultra | April 2025 | 1.80 m | 52 kg | Endurance-tuned | Won world's first humanoid robot half marathon, 2h 40m 42s over 21 km[3][9] |
| Tiangong 3.0 (Embodied Tien Kung 3.0) | February 10, 2026 | 1.69 m | 62 kg | High dynamic | 43 degrees of freedom; full-body control with tactile feedback; parkour-style 1 m vault; millimeter-level manipulation; powered by Huisi Kaiwu[11][13][14] |
Tiangong 1.0 used a 48 V / 15 Ah battery and an onboard compute system rated for roughly 550 trillion operations per second, paired with high-precision IMUs, 3D vision sensors, and six-axis force sensors at the wrists and ankles.[5] Tiangong Ultra completed the April 2025 half marathon at roughly 7.6 km/h, with three to four battery hot swaps. Of the 20 teams that started the race, it was the only one to break the 3-hour mark.[3][10] Tiangong 3.0, unveiled in February 2026, is the most capable variant. Public demos showed it clearing a 1-meter-high block with a one-handed vault, kneeling and bending in confined spaces, and turning small knobs with millimeter-level precision. It is the first humanoid in the industry to integrate whole-body motion control with tactile interaction across the entire body.[11][13]
Alongside the bipedal Tiangong line, the center develops the Tian Yi 2.0 wheeled humanoid platform, which combines a humanoid upper body with a wheeled mobile base for warehouse and industrial settings.
| Model | Type | Key features |
|---|---|---|
| Tian Yi 2.0 | Wheeled humanoid | Powered by Huisi Kaiwu; autonomous bin picking and material handling; took first and second place in a material-handling competition[16] |
Both Tian Yi 2.0 and the Embodied Tiangong 2.0 are deployed on an unmanned production line at a Foton Cummins engine plant, where they autonomously handle bin pickup, transport, and placement across different shelf heights and container types.[16]
The Huisi Kaiwu (慧思开物, literally roughly "wise thinking, opening things") platform launched in March 2025 as the center's flagship software stack. It is structured around two halves working together:
The platform was described by Beijing Daily and Xinhua as the first universal embodied AI platform compatible with multiple body types: robotic arms, wheeled platforms, and bipedal humanoids.[8][17] In May 2026, the center introduced an upgraded variant called the Wise KaiWu Agent, which adds global scene perception and a dynamic memory system, allowing robots to evolve from passive task execution toward proactive task handling.[17]
The center has built a reputation as one of the more open-source-friendly large humanoid labs in China. The flagship effort is the Open X-Humanoid GitHub organization, which hosts hardware schematics, training environments, and AI models.
| Project | Released | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Tiangong open hardware release | November 2024 | Full mechanical design files, control algorithms, and simulation environment for the original Tiangong[7] |
| TienKung-Lab | 2024 | Direct IsaacLab workflow for legged robots, with reinforcement learning training scripts[18] |
| RoboMIND | December 2024 | Multi-embodiment teleoperation dataset: 107,000 trajectories across 479 tasks and 96 object classes, covering Tien Kung (about 19,000 trajectories), Franka Panda, AgileX Cobot Magic V2, and UR-5e robots; co-developed with Peking University[19] |
| Pelican-VL 1.0 | November 2025 | Open-source vision language brain models for embodied AI, with parameter scales from 7B to 72B, developed by the center's WFM System Group[20] |
| ArtVIP | February 2026 | Simulation asset library bundled with the Tiangong 3.0 platform release[14] |
By late 2025 the RoboMIND dataset had exceeded 15,000 downloads across Hugging Face and other platforms and had been adopted by researchers at Tsinghua University, the University of Hong Kong, and other universities.[2][19]
China runs two national-level humanoid robot innovation centers in parallel rather than a single one. The differences are easy to mix up, so the comparison below lays them side by side.
| Aspect | Beijing center (BHRIC / X-Humanoid) | Shanghai center (OpenLoong) |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | November 2, 2023 | December 2023 |
| National designation | National and Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center (Oct 2024) | National and Local Co-built Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (May 2024) |
| Flagship robot | Tiangong / Tien Kung | Qinglong (青龙, Green Dragon) |
| Brand identity | X-Humanoid | OpenLoong community |
| Notable open source | Tiangong hardware, RoboMIND, Pelican-VL, ArtVIP | Qinglong hardware, Suzaku brain, Xuanwu control |
| Training infrastructure | Yizhuang facilities, partner factories | Building a 1,000-robot heterogeneous training base by 2027 |
Both centers have their own MIIT designation and operate as peers. The Beijing center leans into embodied intelligence, full-body control, and competition-style demos such as the half marathon and Robot Warrior Challenge, while the Shanghai center focuses on a shared open-source humanoid platform and a large-scale data collection base.[2][21]
The center pairs research with on-site factory deployments. Disclosed partnerships include:
| Partner | Use case |
|---|---|
| Foton Cummins | Unmanned engine production line; Tiangong 2.0 and Tian Yi 2.0 do bin picking, transport, and placement[16] |
| China Electric Power Research Institute | High-voltage power facility inspection scenarios[15] |
| Bayer | Pharmaceutical and consumer health manufacturing tasks[15] |
| Li-Ning Group | Sports apparel manufacturing and warehouse operations[15] |
Chinese state media in 2026 reported additional pilots with cement maker Sinoma International and several auto manufacturers.[15]
For the first two years after founding, the BHRIC operated primarily on its registered capital and government-linked support. In February 2026, it closed its first external commercial financing round, raising about 700 million yuan (approximately $100 million) alongside the Tiangong 3.0 launch, with proceeds earmarked for R&D scaling and commercial deployment.[12] Its main shareholder companies are themselves backed by major Chinese investors: Xiaomi is a publicly listed conglomerate, UBTECH is listed in Hong Kong, and the Yizhuang holding companies are part of Beijing's state asset network.
The BHRIC is one of two national-level humanoid robot innovation centers in China and consistently appears near the top of Chinese rankings of humanoid robot companies by output and visibility. Its open source approach with Tiangong, RoboMIND, and Pelican-VL has made it one of the more visible Chinese humanoid initiatives on the global stage. Coverage in PBS, CGTN, Xinhua, China Daily, and Interesting Engineering has tracked its half marathon win, Robot Warrior Challenge run, and Tiangong 3.0 launch as marker events for Chinese humanoid robotics in 2025 and 2026.[3][4][13] MERICS identified the Beijing center as a key node in China's embodied AI strategy in its 2025 report, noting that the dual-center model in Beijing and Shanghai represents China's preferred bet on coordinated state-industry consortia.[21]