From dance floor to war: China readies humanoid robots for combat

In May 2025, the ​PLA issued a tender to purchase a humanoid robot, including installation and technical ​training. Four months later, a procurement notice that listed an NUDT email ⁠as its contact address sought an “embodied humanoid robot intelligent perception and dexterous operation system.”

The records contained few specifics. Reuters couldn’t determine whether the tenders were filled, and if so, which companies won or which robot models were supplied.

In June this year, the PLA budgeted about $300,000 for a system to collect and label camera, radar and motion data for humanoids, including information about terrain they could traverse, according to another military procurement document. A year later, NUDT explicitly framed humanoid robots as battlefield tools. A university competition in June 2025 featured an event that simulated “infiltration behind enemy lines,” requiring robots to enter an area, map it and locate targets, according to its website. Another envisioned robots conducting identity checks, discipline inspections and security patrols at military bases.

The military-research university described the competition in part as a proving ground for humanoids to eventually "move toward the battlefield."

Procurement records around that time reflected that ultimate goal. BEIJING, Sept 7 (Reuters) - At the World Humanoid Robot Games in China last month, robots jumped, boxed and danced. Some fleet-footed bots ran faster than Usain Bolt over 100 meters. Spectators cheered the machines’ improving capabilities and their meme-worthy stumbles.

Two days after the Games ended, the People's Liberation Army's official newspaper drew its own conclusions from the show. The PLA Daily called for researchers to accelerate the transfer of cutting-edge technologies from laboratories to military training grounds for robotic “combatants.”

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