China has turned a science fiction trope into industrial policy, opening a dedicated “robot school” where humanoid machines are drilled in everything from factory work to household chores. The project is part of a broader national push to turn humanoids into a mainstream labor force, not just experimental showpieces. As the facilities scale up, the country is effectively building a parallel education system for robots, complete with training grounds, standardized curricula, and a clear pipeline into real jobs.
Inside China’s new ‘robot school’ experiment
The new training center is designed less like a lab and more like a vocational campus, where humanoid robots cycle through repetitive drills until they can perform tasks with near-muscle-memory precision. Instead of textbooks, the curriculum is encoded in motion data and control algorithms, and the “students” are expected to master both industrial routines and domestic tasks such as cleaning or carrying items. The goal is to turn general-purpose humanoids into reliable workers that can be dropped into a factory line or a home without weeks of custom programming.
Reports on the facility describe robots being remotely guided by human operators to complete complex actions, such as carefully placing objects in specific locations, then repeating those movements until they can execute them autonomously in a couple of hours of practice, a process detailed in coverage of how staff at the center work with State Grid Shandong Electric Power Grid Co., Ltd. to refine these skills through remote guidance. The facility is not a one-off stunt, but a prototype for a network of training bases that Chinese planners see as essential infrastructure for the next wave of automation.
From pilot campus to national robot ‘boot camps’
What looks like a single school in Beijing is in fact the visible tip of a much larger strategy to industrialize humanoid training. Authorities have backed a series of large-scale “robot boot camps” that treat humanoids as a new class of industrial asset, to be trained, standardized, and deployed at scale. The biggest of these facilities, located in Beijing’s Shijingshan district, reportedly covers an area of more than 10,000 square meters, a footprint closer to a logistics hub than a research lab.
Local government statements describe these training bases as a way to speed up the development of “world leading” humanoids while driving down costs, effectively turning robot education into a manufacturing discipline rather than a bespoke engineering exercise. The same Shijingshan complex is cited as the largest of several such centers, with officials emphasizing that the cluster of facilities is meant to create a full pipeline from prototype to mass deployment, a vision underlined by descriptions of the biggest facility in Shijingshan as a cornerstone of this emerging ecosystem.
Beijing Humanoid Robot Data Center: the ‘classroom’ floor
The most vivid glimpse into how this education model works comes from the Beijing Humanoid Robot Data Center, which functions as both a training ground and a data factory. Photos from the site show rows of humanoid robots in various stages of practice, some balancing, others manipulating tools, all feeding performance data back into a central system. The center is explicitly framed as a place where robots are prepared before they “enter the workforce,” a phrase that underscores how seriously planners take the idea of humanoids as future colleagues rather than curiosities.
Reporting By Pan Xutao for People’s Daily describes how the Beijing Humanoid Robot Data Center is staffed by specialists who treat each robot’s training cycle as a structured program, with the head of the training center overseeing how motion data is collected, labeled, and reused to refine the next generation of models, a process detailed in coverage that credits By Pan Xutao and highlights the role of the Beijing Humanoid Robot Data Center. In effect, the facility is less a school in the human sense and more a feedback loop, where every task a robot attempts becomes training material for thousands of others.
Repetition as curriculum: 1,250 tries to get it right
At the heart of this robot schooling model is a simple, almost old-fashioned idea: practice until perfect. Instead of teaching a robot a task once and moving on, trainers push each unit through hundreds or even thousands of repetitions until the motion is robust to small changes in environment or load. This is especially important for humanoids, whose bipedal form and multi-joint arms make them far more complex to control than traditional industrial arms bolted to the floor.
One report notes that robots at the center complete up to 1,250 repetitions to master a single precise movement, a figure cited by Georgina Jedikovska in coverage of AI and Robotic training. That level of repetition is not just about accuracy, it is about building a library of edge cases, from slightly misaligned parts on a factory line to a slippery floor in a kitchen. Each failed attempt becomes another data point that helps the control system learn how to recover, which is crucial if humanoids are to work safely alongside people in homes and workshops.
Factory lines and living rooms: where these robots are headed
The training programs are explicitly geared toward two very different environments, heavy industry and the home, which demand different skill sets but share a need for adaptable, humanlike motion. On the factory side, humanoids are being prepared for tasks such as welding, assembly, and inspection, especially in settings where existing automation is too rigid or expensive to retrofit. The idea is that a humanoid can walk into a workspace designed for people and start contributing with minimal changes to layout or tooling.
At the same time, the curriculum includes domestic routines like cleaning, carrying groceries, or assisting with basic caregiving, so that the same core platform can be reskilled for household deployment. Coverage of the robot school notes that the facility is expected to supply trained humanoids not only to industrial partners but also to cities such as Jinan, Hefei, and Zhengzhou, with planners highlighting that the center will feed robots into both factory tasks and home chores across these regions, a pipeline described in detail in reports on how the facility is expected to serve Jinan, Hefei, and Zhengzhou. That dual focus hints at a future in which the same robot model might spend part of its lifecycle in a warehouse and another phase in a family apartment.
Shanghai’s Kylin Training Ground and the rise of regional hubs
Beijing is not the only city turning robot training into a strategic asset. Earlier this year, China opened its first humanoid robot training center in Shanghai’s Pudong District, a site known as The Kylin Training Ground. The facility is positioned as a regional hub that can host dozens of humanoids at once, giving local manufacturers and startups a place to test and refine their machines before sending them into commercial service.
According to descriptions shared by robotics enthusiasts, The Kylin Training Ground in Shanghai’s Pudong District is designed to scale up to 1,000 humanoid robots by 2027, a figure that underscores how quickly planners expect demand to grow for trained units, as highlighted in posts noting that China has opened its first humanoid robot training center in Shanghai’s Pudong District, The Kylin Training Ground. By spreading these hubs across major economic zones, China is effectively building a distributed campus network for robots, where each region can tailor training to its dominant industries while still feeding data back into a national pool.
National and Local Co‑Built innovation: training 100-plus robots at once
Beyond city-level projects, China has also launched a state-of-the-art center explicitly designed to train more than 100 humanoid robots simultaneously. The facility, known as The National and Local Co-Built Humanoid Robotics Innov center, is framed as a flagship for coordinated innovation between central authorities and regional governments. Its mission is to push the boundaries of robotic training, not just in terms of numbers but also in the complexity of tasks and the sophistication of the AI systems involved.
Reports on the center describe how these advanced robots are put through scenarios that mirror real industrial workflows, including welding, manufacturing, and automotive testing, with trainers monitoring how each unit handles variability and stress in these environments, a process detailed in coverage of how State and The National and Local Co-Built Humanoid Robotics Innov center operate. Training more than 100 robots at once is not just a technical feat, it is a statement of intent that humanoids are expected to become a standard fixture in factories and test tracks, not a niche experiment.
Pudong’s first training base and the push for an open ecosystem
Shanghai’s role in this story goes beyond The Kylin Training Ground, with local authorities also unveiling what they describe as the city’s first dedicated training base for robots. Officials in Pudong have been explicit that the humanoid robot industry is too big for any single platform or enterprise to dominate, arguing that a shared base is needed to foster collaboration among hardware makers, software developers, and end users. That philosophy treats the training base as neutral ground where different robot models can be tested under common standards.
Statements from the unveiling ceremony emphasize that the Pudong base is meant to anchor a broader industrial ecology, with leaders stressing that the humanoid robot industry is “too big to let a single platform or enterprise create the industrial ecology alone,” a line that appears in official descriptions of how Shanghai launches 1st training base for robots. By opening the doors to multiple companies and research teams, Pudong is betting that shared training infrastructure will accelerate innovation while preventing any one player from locking up the most valuable motion data.
Why China is racing to educate its robots
Behind the bricks and circuits of these training centers lies a straightforward strategic calculation. China sees humanoid robots as a way to sustain growth in manufacturing and services even as its working-age population shrinks and labor costs rise. By investing in large-scale training infrastructure now, planners hope to create a mature humanoid workforce that can step into roles that are dangerous, repetitive, or hard to staff, from high-voltage maintenance to overnight warehouse shifts.
This ambition fits into a broader national agenda to lead in advanced technologies, with robotics sitting alongside AI, electric vehicles, and semiconductors as priority sectors. Official and semi-official narratives present humanoid training centers as part of a coordinated push to make China a global hub for intelligent manufacturing, arguing that whoever controls the platforms and data for training humanoids will shape the next era of industrial standards. In that context, the robot school is less a curiosity and more a testbed for how a country might systematically “educate” machines at national scale.
From novelty to normalized co‑workers
What makes this wave of projects notable is how quickly humanoids are being normalized as future co-workers rather than futuristic mascots. Training centers talk about throughput, utilization, and deployment pipelines in the same breath as they discuss balance control or grasping algorithms, a sign that the conversation has shifted from “can we build a humanoid” to “how many can we train this quarter.” The presence of partners such as State Grid Shandong Electric Power Grid Co., Ltd. in the training process shows that major utilities and manufacturers are already planning for humanoids to take on specific roles in their operations.
Coverage of the robot school notes that while one human operator remotely guided a robot to place objects with precision, another monitored how the machine adapted to slight changes in position or resistance, a workflow described in reports on how robots at the center work with State Grid Shandong Electric Power Grid Co., Ltd.. As these routines become more polished, it is not hard to imagine a near future in which a humanoid that once practiced in Beijing or Shanghai ends up stocking shelves in a supermarket, inspecting a substation, or vacuuming an apartment floor, its “education” quietly embedded in every step it takes.
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