China Issues Six National Standards for Humanoid Robots, Effective April 1 Next Year

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation issued six national standards for the humanoid robot sector and said they will take effect April 1 next year. Leaderobot.com reported the news on 2026-10-16. The six standards comprise five technical requirements standards and the Technical Specifications for Humanoid Robot Simulation Test Platforms.

With the State Administration for Market Regulation issuing the six standards as national standards, humanoid robot design and evaluation may shift toward common public standards and away from criteria developed independently by individual companies. Standardizing virtual testing platforms in particular affects how motion performance that is difficult to assess using physical robots alone will be evaluated, with implications for both developers and testing organizations.

The focus is not on an individual humanoid robot product, but on China establishing common rules as national standards across design, manufacturing and evaluation. Five of the six standards are a series of technical requirements, while the remaining one covers a virtual testing platform. This points to standardization that includes evaluation methods, rather than just performance criteria. The standards cover areas such as the robot’s body structure and system architecture, environmental perception, and intelligent decision-making, reflecting an effort to align the conditions for overall operation rather than treat hardware and software separately. From our perspective, this is less a novel technology announcement than an effort to establish a common language ahead of mass production and deployment. As Li Jincun said, if perception, action and verification are treated as a continuous closed loop, the role of standards is not only to show whether a product is good or bad, but also to establish which functions are measured and under what conditions. We have no related coverage, but based on publicly available information, standards of this kind are also likely to affect specifications for component supply and evaluation equipment. Companies may need to align product design criteria and testing environments with the standards. See the original source for details. At the industry level, standardizing virtual testing platforms is important. If there is a common approach to evaluating conditions that are difficult to reproduce through physical testing alone, comparability during development could improve, potentially changing the basis for certification and adoption decisions. However, even if standards come first, it remains a separate question what capabilities mass-produced robots will actually meet and at what level, and who will establish testing environments that conform to the standards. The next points to examine are the specific provisions, scope of application and practical testing conditions for each standard.

For Japanese companies, the establishment in China of national standards covering humanoid robot body structure, system architecture, environmental perception and intelligent decision-making means that testing environment compatibility will be an issue alongside product design. When developing or evaluating products for China, having a verification system aligned with the standards is likely to become a practical consideration.