(Yicai) Sept. 29 -- Chinese manufacturers are favoring wheeled robots over bipedal humanoid robots as they are cheaper, more energy efficient and have a greater load capacity, Yicai learned from interviews with industry insiders. However, some experts believe that once the technical hurdles are overcome, two-legged robots could eventually gain the upper hand.

Both factories and robot makers have noticed over the past year that bipedal robots consume too much energy and cannot keep up with the pace of assembly lines, Liu Changwen, general manager of industrial robotics company Step Electric Corp., told Yicai.

“I personally feel that a consensus is gradually forming, which is that two-legged humanoid robots are not suitable for factories,” Liu said.

Bipedal robots use up 40 percent of their energy and 60 percent of their computing power just to move their legs, yet this generates no value in a factory. Even manufacturers of humanoid robots are also now rolling out wheeled models in large numbers, he added.

Step Electric recently deployed a humanoid robot in white goods maker Haier’s refrigerator factory in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing. “We have two main goals,” Liu said. “The first is to upgrade robot control systems to meet real on-the-ground factory needs. And the second is to gather industrial data. This will give us the data foundation to train the next generation of robots when we start mass production.”

Puzhi Robotics has shipped 200 robots so far, of which 60 percent are wheeled and 40 percent are bipedal, Cai Zhihao, deputy general manager of the joint venture between the Institute of PI Robotics and robotics startup Agibot, told Yicai at the 2025 Apsara Conference on Sept. 25.

Puzhi’s bipedal robots sell for between CNY500,000 (USD70,223) and CNY600,000 each, while the wheeled models are priced between CNY400,000 and CNY450,000, he said. Puzhi expects shipments to rise to 1,000 units next year.

In Puzhi’s experience, developing bipedal robots is much more difficult than developing wheeled ones. They need more joints, which means more sensors. The wheeled robots are mostly used in factories, while the bipedal ones are mainly used for exhibition hall tours and demonstrations, Cai said.

Fulin Precision introduced Agibot robots into its factory in Mianyang, southwestern Sichuan province this year and after testing, the Chinese supplier of raw materials for batteries has since placed more orders.

Bipedal robots have the edge when it comes to uneven surfaces and climbing slopes and stairs, said Zhou Xingyou, chairman of PI Robotics. But these advantages do not matter much inside a factory.

Promising Future

Nevertheless, Jiang Lei, chief scientist at the National and Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, believes that humanoid robots have a more promising future in factories than wheeled robots.

“The positioning accuracy of wheeled robots is only at the centimeter level. But industrial applications require sub-millimeter and millimeter precision. This is very hard to achieve with a wheeled base as it cannot provide a perfectly stable reference point,” Jiang said. “Companies are using wheeled robots to get the entire supply chain running, but once the full-body behavior model is mastered, bipedal robots will replace all the wheeled ones.”

Safety, technical feasibility and economic value are still big barriers to bipedal robots “working” in factories, Zhou said. It could take three to five years, or even up to 10 years, before humanoid robots can be used in all factory scenarios. There are still many tasks in factories that cannot be automated at present and humanoid robots offer a very promising solution, he said.

Editor: Kim Taylor