500 humanoid robots replacing humans in high-voltage operations What does that look like? Steel against steel,instead of flesh and blood. This marks a turning point for China’s State Grid, shifting from human-based maintenance to autonomous operations. This year, State Grid announced plans to procure 8,500 embodied AI robots, with... a total budget of RMB 6.8 billion (~$1 billion). These robots will be deployed across four major scenarios: power inspection, live-line operations, emergency response, and warehouse logistics,covering more than 600 specific task scenarios. Among them, humanoid robots for live-line operations are the most expensive and strategically critical: 500 units with a budget of RMB 2.5 billion (~$370 million). They will be deployed in distribution network live-line work and ultra-high-voltage (UHV) projects, replacing humans in high-risk tasks. Workers will transition into supervisory roles, ready to take over remotely when needed. As early as last year, State Grid had already validated the feasibility of humanoid robots for substation inspection. Tienkung can autonomously perform inspection tasks at a State Grid substation in Beijing. Of course, suppliers are not limited to X-Humanoid,players like Unitree, AGIBOT, DeepRobotics, UBTECH, and Fourier are all involved. These 500 humanoid robots will also collaborate with 5,000 inspection quadruped robots and 3,000 dual-arm wheeled robots for indoor substation maintenance,together forming an intelligent, automated, and collaborative network for autonomous grid operations. What does this change? According to State Grid, each embodied AI unit can save RMB 500,000 to 800,000 (~$70,000–$110,000) in annual labor costs, with a payback period of around 2–3 years. Inspection efficiency increases by 5x, fault response time is reduced by 60%, and power supply reliability improves by 0.5 percentage points. More importantly, over 90% of human exposure to high-risk operations can be eliminated, reducing safety incidents by 80%. At another level, for humanoid robot companies, the center of R&D and iteration is shifting to the customer site. Real-world physical interaction becomes the fastest feedback loop,accelerating innovation and evolution. And 8,500 units are just the beginning of scaled deployment. Based on current plans, embodied AI robots will cover 30% of key areas in State Grid by 2026, 80% of high-risk operation scenarios by 2027, and enable fully autonomous operations by 2030. The demand roadmap is clear: define use cases ->deploy at scale->improve models and robots->expand further. 8,500… 50,000… 100,000… But remember,power grids are just one part of China’s vast infrastructure system. The experience of autonomous robotic operations here can be replicated across other sectors, such as broader energy systems. That, in itself, is another story. P.S.The video shows Tienkung 1.0 autonomously performing substation inspection tasks (2025).show more

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