Recently, Shanghai Electric officially unveiled its first self-developed humanoid robot, Suyuan. Unlike most general-purpose humanoid robots available on the market, Shanghai Electric has leveraged its deep expertise in intelligent manufacturing to integrate industrial DNA with embodied intelligence, creating a humanoid robot that truly understands industry.

Shanghai Electric’s Robot Innovations

The launch of Suyuan marks a new paradigm in intelligent manufacturing, reconstructed with industrial DNA. Suyuan stands 1.67 meters tall, weighs 50 kilograms, and is ergonomically designed for standard factory environments. With 38 degrees of freedom, the robot demonstrates high agility and coordination, allowing it to operate seamlessly in complex industrial settings. In terms of performance, built with a lightweight aluminum alloy skeleton and carbon fiber composites, equipped with self-developed high-precision harmonic drive reducer and planetary roller screw, Suyuan achieves 2 kg payload per arm, 10 kg maximum system payload, and 5 km/h walking speed. These capabilities meet the demands of high-intensity industrial tasks such as handling and assembly. Many of Suyuan’s components are independently designed and manufactured. Its dexterous hands are equipped with custom bearing reducers developed by Shanghai Tian’an Bearing (a group subsidiary), which feature high precision, low noise, and lightweight design, enabling delicate operations in industrial scenarios. In terms of perception and intelligence, with LiDAR and binocular cameras, Suyuan boasts a 360° environmental perception system for autonomous navigation. It is powered by 275 TOPS edge computing capacity, capable of processing massive data streams in real time. Combined with integrated large language models, Suyuan enables natural human–computer interaction. Looking ahead, Suyuan, equipped with a domain-specific model trained by Shanghai Electric using data corpora collected from the industrial sector, will integrate Shanghai Electric’s vertical domain models trained on industrial data, allowing it to play critical roles in inspection, pick-and-place, handling, and assembly tasks.

Shanghai Electric’s robotics vision extends far beyond Suyuan. Leveraging its abundant industrial scenarios, the Company has built a comprehensive embodied skill training platform called Peiyuan. As one of Peiyuan’s flagship outcomes, the dual-arm robot Lingke recently made its debut. Powered by Peiyuan’s high-quality real datasets and simulated environments, Lingke undergoes progressive training in complex scenarios, repeatedly honing operational skills. This enables iterative model upgrades, forming a closed loop of data–model–deployment. With a modular design, it achieves quick tool-switching for grinding, flaw detection, and other tasks, driving the shift from fixed production lines to flexible manufacturing. Moreover, with precision force control and intelligent path planning, Lingke improves efficiency in localized operations on large components by over 5 times compared to manual work, dramatically reducing labor dependence and operational risks.

Shanghai Electric’s Industrial Layout

Beyond Suyuan and Lingke, Shanghai Electric has unveiled a range of breakthroughs in the field of embodied-intelligence robotics, spanning core robot components, AI agent service platforms, and full industrial applications. With its solid foundation in industrial manufacturing and supply chain integration, the Company has built a complete robotics industry chain, covering upstream key components, midstream robot systems, and downstream application scenarios. In terms of upstream core components, breakthroughs have been made. Shanghai Tian’an Bearing delivered specialized reducer bearings for dexterous hands. Featuring lightweight design and advanced manufacturing processes, they maintain 0.01 mm-level precision under complex motion loads. Shanghai United Bearing developed industry-leading angular contact ball bearings for RV reducers in industrial robots, offering advanced technology and product diversity. Shanghai Zhenhua Bearing created special crossed roller bearings, enabling domestic substitution of high-precision drive bearings for robots. Shanghai Machine Tool Works launched the 200-series screw grinding machine, capable of machining planetary roller screws and various other screw types, achieving P0-grade (sub-100-nanometer) grinding precision, which is the highest grade in the national standard.

In terms of the midstream robot systems, the newly released humanoid robot Suyuan is designed for industrial production and smart manufacturing, leveraging Shanghai Electric’s strong industrial clusters and supply chain advantages. In terms of downstream application scenarios, Shanghai Electric accelerates technology deployment through its hybrid industrial embodied-skill training platform. Currently, Shanghai Electric has built a repository of atomic skills and deployed more than 10 general-purpose humanoid robots across over 10 industrial training scenarios, with solutions for two of these scenarios already implemented. In addition to building the industrial chain, Shanghai Electric’s strategic layout extends to ecosystem development, integrating resources across the value chain through mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnerships.

Shanghai Electric’s presence in the robotics sector offers valuable insights for the industry. By combining ecosystem development with industrial chain integration, the Company deeply fuses industrial DNA with embodied intelligence, integrates global technological resources, explores local industrial applications, and seizes policy advantages. In this sense, Shanghai Electric is shaping a new “Chinese paradigm” for humanoid robots.