From Dance Floor to Battlefield: China Prepares Humanoid Robots for Combat

At a robot games event in China, humanoids jumped, boxed and danced while spectators cheered their progress and laughed at their highly shareable stumbles. Two days later, the People’s Liberation Army’s official newspaper drew a more serious conclusion, calling for cutting-edge technologies to move faster from laboratories into military training grounds for robotic “combatants.”

A Reuters review of more than 100 Chinese military procurement notices, academic studies, patents, official publications, government records and defense-company materials found that China’s defense establishment is accelerating research into military uses for humanoids. Military institutions are testing the machines against battlefield requirements, seeking robots and training technologies, and studying how humanoids might work alongside soldiers.

The work gained momentum in 2025 and 2026, with attention focused on robot perception, manipulation and training data. Chinese manufacturers accounted for about 95 international of global humanoid shipments in 2025, according to BofA Global Research, giving the PLA access to an expanding commercial sector while it develops military applications of its own.

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Going where we don’t want humans to go is one of the most compelling reasons to develop robots in the first place.

The research reflects wider military interest in autonomous systems. In the Russia-Ukraine war, semiautonomous drones that use artificial intelligence for navigation and targeting have reshaped reconnaissance and attack, while robots carry supplies and retrieve casualties. Dennis Hong, a UCLA professor, said one of the strongest arguments for robots is sending them into places where people should not go. “If losing a robot means avoiding the loss of a human life, then the robot can become expendable,” he said.

China’s defense ministry and the National University of Defense Technology did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters found no evidence that China has deployed an armed humanoid with an operational PLA unit. The machines remain energy-intensive and unreliable beyond controlled demonstrations, and battlefield unpredictability can expose their limitations, according to Carnegie Mellon professor Aaron Johnson. China is already developing a vision for using humanoids, robot dogs and unmanned vehicles in urban warfare, although the supplied excerpt ends before detailing that plan.

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If losing a robot means avoiding the loss of a human life, then the robot can become expendable.