UBTECH Robotics opened what it calls the world's first 10,000-unit-per-year humanoid robot smart factory on September 12, 2026, in Liuzhou, Guangxi. The 14,000-square-meter, 13.8-meter-tall facility is designed to roll out one industrial humanoid every 10 minutes — with UBTECH's own Walker S and Cruzr robots working alongside collaborative arms and AGVs on the line.
Robots building robots at industrial cadence
Inside the plant, UBTECH says humanoids handle unloading, stacking and part transport, while collaborative robots, remote manipulators and rotating workbenches assemble the humanoids themselves. An automated warehouse packs 112 spare robots into just 65 square meters, a claimed 50% gain in space efficiency, while every finished unit spends more than four hours in a full-unit test rig plus a 360-degree, automotive-grade quality inspection.
Siemens is the digital backbone
The plant is powered by Siemens Digital Industries Software. Siemens Plant Simulation built a 1:1 digital twin of aisles, workstations and material flow before ramp; Siemens Intelligence Center X sits under UBTECH's Yanshee manufacturing operations management (MOM) platform to schedule production, dispatch materials and enforce global quality gates. Beijing Innovation Center for Humanoid Robotics contributed its RoboMIND dataset to help train the Walker S skills that get factory-tested on the line.
Why 10,000 units a year matters
Ten thousand units a year is the number at which humanoids stop being a demo and start looking like an actual product line. UBTECH VP Fang Jianxin framed it as evidence that "Chinese robots have already entered the global first tier" thanks to a mature supply chain, manufacturing capability and research base. Chinese industrial-robot output hit 98,677 units in July 2026, up 30.2% year on year, with 635,056 units in the first seven months of 2026 — the volume base UBTECH is now competing to feed.
Deployments already lined up
The Liuzhou line is being ramped against real orders. Walker S2 has been piloted or deployed at BYD, Nio, Zeekr, Dongfeng and Foxconn factories through 2025-2026, and Cruzr Y1 / Cruzr S2 continue to ship into retail, hospitality and public-service venues. UBTECH's Hong Kong listing (9880.HK) rose more than 6% in the days after the announcement.
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Reporting based on coverage from Interesting Engineering, Global Times and Seoul Economic Daily.