ambition goes far beyond registration
People, depending on where they live in the world, have an ID, vehicles have a chassis number and many technological devices can be tracked through unique identifiers. It’s not just bureaucracy: it’s a way of knowing what everything is, Where does it come from and what journey has it had?. China now wants to bring that logic to humanoid robots. And we are not talking about a commercial label or a simple serial number, but rather an identity designed to accompany each machine throughout its useful life. The movement was presented in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, during a working meeting on the full life cycle management platform for humanoid robots. Xinhua points out that the associated standard introduces for the first time a 29-character “identity code” for each unit. It is not intended as a provisional reference. According to the authorities, it will be unique and unalterable over time. And we are not faced with an arbitrary string of numbers either. The code is divided into four sections: two characters for the country, four to identify the manufacturer, six for the product model and its technical characteristics, and 17 for the serial number of each unit. The logic is that the code can say several things at the same time: where the robot was manufactured, who is behind it, what model and technical category it belongs to and what is the specific machine within that series. The immediate objective is to move from model tracking to individual tracking. A code to organize an industry that China wants to scale The purpose, as we can see, goes far beyond giving each robot a technical name and surname. SCMP points out that the government seeks to respond to certain challenges that appear with the arrival of humanoids in different environments. They talk about different coding rules between companies, difficulties in recognizing the same identity between sectors and unclear limits when responsibilities must be attributed. The authorities also want products to be traceable to monitor risks. The digital identity thus functions as a basis for ordering security, maintenance, certification, retirement and recycling. The important detail is that Beijing is trying to fit humanoids within a system of standards, not just within a technological platform. A central actor in all this is the HEIS committee, under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The work is carried out in collaboration with the Electronic Standardization Institute, the Chinese Society of Electronics and more than 50 entities. The list of affected actors confirms the approach: manufacturers, service providers, sellers, users, importers, recyclers and supervisory authorities. The figures help measure how far the project has come so far. According to the aforementioned Chinese agency, the platform has already covered more than 100 Chinese companies, has incorporated more than 200 models and has assigned codes to more than 28,000 humanoid robots. We are not, therefore, facing a standard disconnected from the industrial fabric. Representatives from cities such as Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu and Ningbo also signed at the event, integrated into a working mechanism that brings together 20 cities linked to artificial intelligence, and more than 30 leading companies in the sector. The movement fits with an industrial ambition that comes from before. The International Robotics Federationa places China as the largest global market for industrial robots in 2024, with 54% of global deployments, 295,000 annual installations and an operational park that already exceeds two million units. In addition, its manufacturers outsold foreign suppliers within the country for the first time, with a domestic share of 57%. In parallel, the MIIT has pointed out that humanoids have the potential to become a disruptive product after computers, smartphones and new energy vehicles. It is advisable, however, to separate the scale from maturity. The IFR itself places China is very high in robotic density, the indicator that measures the number of robots per 10,000 employees, with 567, but behind South Korea, with 1,220, and Singapore, with 818. Japan also retains a very strong position: in 2023 it was the second largest world market for industrial robots and represented 38% of global production. In humanoids, MERICS remembersbecause they remain a minimal part of robotic production and are not yet deployed on a large scale. The most interesting reading is in what this system anticipates within the Chinese approach. If humanoids move from demonstration to actual deployment, Beijing appears to want that transition to depend not only on AI, sensors or mechanical prowess, but also on a previous layer of identification and tracking. China is trying to get ahead of that phase with a platform that turns each unit into a recognizable product throughout its journey. Images | UBTECH In Xataka | For China, DeepSeek is more than just AI: it is the key to creating an industry that makes them independent of Nvidia