China Puts Humanoid Robots to Work at Vietnam Border in 264 Million Yuan Experiment

A Border Crossing Becomes a Robotics Test

China has approved a deployment worth approximately 264 million yuan, or US$37 million, to put Ubtech's Walker S2 humanoid robots to work at a busy land crossing with Vietnam. In Fangchenggang, a coastal city in the Guangxi region, machines roughly the size of an adult are being assigned to guide travellers, manage queues and support security inspections.

As of January 18, 2026, the project turns a crossing used by freight trucks, buses and tourists into a working test of robots in public infrastructure. The aim is to keep people and goods moving while helping border personnel maintain security. The deployment is described as one of the largest uses of humanoid systems in government operations to date.

Fangchenggang is familiar with long lines of trucks and impatient travellers. Its position beside Vietnam places it on a busy route for trade and travel, where delays can slow commerce as well as disrupt individual journeys. The border experiment puts robots into that pressure, beyond the more controlled setting of a demonstration.

Ubtech's machines differ from fixed gates and information kiosks because they can walk, talk and interact with people. Their role combines passenger assistance with mobile observation, giving authorities a way to test whether a machine that moves through a crossing can help staff handle repetitive work.

Human border guards remain responsible for duties requiring greater judgment. The robots are being placed in supporting roles, while personnel concentrate on checks involving greater risk, complicated paperwork and intelligence work. The project's larger ambition is to test how artificial intelligence and robotics can fit into essential public services.

Why Fangchenggang Is the Testing Ground

Fangchenggang's crossing brings together freight trucks, buses travelling across the border and people making short visits. Customs officers must inspect both passengers and cargo while responding to demands for quicker, smoother passage. Heavy traffic makes those objectives difficult to balance.

Long queues create several kinds of work at once. Travellers need directions and answers about procedures, vehicles need to move through the right areas, and officers must continue their checks. Repeated questions and routine instructions consume time even when they are simple to answer.

The humanoid deployment is intended to take on some of those recurring tasks. A robot that directs a passenger to the correct line or gives instructions in a waiting hall could help staff spend more time on work that requires their attention.

China is using the congested crossing as a practical testing ground for assistants driven by artificial intelligence. Success at Fangchenggang could provide a model for other busy entry points. The immediate challenge is to make the technology useful in a place where movement, crowding and security requirements all change throughout the day.

What the Walker S2 Can Do

The Walker S2 stands approximately 1.76 metres tall and weighs about 70 kilograms. Designed as an industrial humanoid, it has 52 degrees of freedom. That term describes the separate movements its body can make, allowing its limbs and joints to take different positions rather than moving as a rigid unit.

Dexterous hands allow the robot to manipulate objects with precision. Each arm can carry up to 15 kilograms, while joints with high turning force allow deep squatting and stooping. Those movements matter for a machine expected to do physical work rather than remain at an information desk.

Ubtech's BrainNet 2.0 and Co-Agent AI frameworks combine multimodal reasoning with task planning. In plain terms, the system is designed to work with different kinds of information and organise the steps needed to complete a task. At a border crossing, that capability supports movement and work in a complex environment.

The Walker S2 uses a pure RGB binocular stereo vision system. Two views from colour cameras give it depth information in a way comparable to human vision. The system is intended to help the machine adapt to dense, changing surroundings, including crowds.

Dynamic balancing algorithms help the robot stay stable while carrying heavy loads or moving at speeds of up to 7.2 kilometres per hour. Together, its vision, joint movement and balancing systems are intended to make a machine with two legs useful in spaces shared with people.

Passenger Guidance and Freight Patrols

At the checkpoint, Walker S2 robots are assigned visible, repetitive duties. They guide passengers into the appropriate queues, answer simple questions about forms and procedures, and deliver instructions in waiting halls in the manner of a loudspeaker announcement.

Freight areas give the robots a different set of tasks. They patrol between parked trucks and stacks of containers, scan containers and relay information to human command centres. Their mobility allows them to serve as moving observation points as well as guides.

Fangchenggang's humanoids therefore combine functions associated with traffic marshals, tour guides and mobile CCTV towers. The intention is to make routine assistance and observation less demanding for human agents, leaving those agents to focus on more complicated decisions.

Some units are also intended to inspect manufacturing sites producing steel, copper and aluminium. At those locations, they would walk predefined routes through industrial areas with high temperatures. This extends the project beyond passenger and immigration duties into another demanding workplace.

These assignments give the deployment several practical tests: whether the machines can interact usefully with travellers, move around freight areas and carry out planned inspection routes. Each setting places different demands on the same basic robot design.

How a Three Minute Battery Swap Works

The Walker S2's autonomous dual battery system is central to its proposed working schedule. The robot can replace a depleted battery with a charged one in approximately three minutes, without a person carrying out the exchange.

The system supports hot swapping, meaning the battery arrangement is designed to keep the robot powered while a pack is replaced. Access to a station with charged batteries allows the machine to manage its energy supply rather than wait for a worker to plug it in or change a pack.

Ubtech presents that ability as a route to nearly 24 hours of operation without manual intervention. At a border crossing, where duties continue across staff shifts, a short battery exchange could make lengthy charging stops less disruptive.

Human teams need breaks, handovers and rest periods. A robot that manages its own batteries could keep covering routine duties across those transitions. The proposed benefit is a more consistent security presence, with less dependence on continuous supervision of its power supply.

The operating model still includes planned maintenance and charging logistics. The battery feature shifts part of the workload towards keeping stations, spare packs and machines ready for service. Its value at Fangchenggang depends on those arrangements supporting the demands of an active crossing.

China's Policy Push and Ubtech's Orders

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology called for a national innovation system around humanoid robots by 2025. The Fangchenggang deployment fits that wider policy push to bring advanced robotics into practical use, including critical infrastructure.

The sector has received strong policy backing, and agencies in multiple provinces have begun incorporating robots into routine work. Similar deployments have appeared in airports, government offices and major events. Immigration authorities used multilingual robots at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit.

Ubtech says cumulative orders for its Walker series have reached 1.1 billion yuan since shipments began. The company has also outlined a plan to deliver 500 industrial humanoid robots by the end of the year, increase production tenfold the following year and reach annual production of 10,000 units by 2027.

The Fangchenggang contract's value of 264 million yuan is equivalent to approximately 24 percent of the 1.1 billion yuan figure Ubtech gives for cumulative Walker series orders. That comparison shows the financial scale of the border project alongside the company's reported order total.

The policy and production milestones place the deployment within a longer effort to expand the use of humanoid robots:

• 2025: The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's target year for a national innovation system around humanoid robots.
• January 18, 2026: The Fangchenggang project is described as a deployment supporting border operations and industrial inspections.
• 2027: Ubtech's longer term target is annual production of 10,000 units.

Ubtech's production ambitions would move the company towards much larger volumes. Fangchenggang, meanwhile, provides a public setting in which the usefulness of those machines is being tested through everyday work.

Autonomy Still Has Practical Limits

Esyin Chew, a roboticist at Cardiff Metropolitan University, offers a cautious assessment of current capabilities. Robots can perform one or two things autonomously, she notes, but they cannot yet react to problems in the real world as human brains do.

Researchers recognise a substantial change in humanoid capabilities over the past five years while still regarding the technology as being at an early stage. For Fangchenggang, the challenge is to make those gains dependable in a crowded operational setting.

Technology exhibitions have exposed practical weaknesses in machines with two legs. Robots have stumbled, failed to complete work autonomously or required remote assistance. Their demonstrated capabilities remain below some of the promises made for them.

When a Walker S2 fails during autonomous work, a backup remote operator often takes control to finish the task. That intervention also provides data for future versions. Human assistance is therefore part of the operating arrangement as the machines develop.

A border crossing combines changing pedestrian movement, freight activity and repeated interactions with travellers. The robot's ability to perform a planned task must work alongside people who can respond when conditions change or the machine needs help.

Maintenance and Surveillance Concerns

Fangchenggang's humid environment creates practical concerns for expensive robotic equipment. Dust is another challenge. Keeping the machines working requires attention to battery life, charging arrangements, maintenance and spare parts.

A breakdown at the wrong moment could work against the project's aim of reducing congestion. A queue delayed because the robot directing it needs maintenance or a recharge would leave travellers waiting for the equipment intended to speed their passage.

The battery swapping system addresses one part of that problem by shortening power changes. Mechanical reliability, available replacement parts and the organisation of repairs remain part of the daily work needed to keep the deployment operating.

Privacy and data collection are also concerns because the machines function as mobile surveillance points. Their duties include observing freight areas and passing information to command centres, bringing data gathering into the same equipment used to assist travellers.

The number of robots assigned to the project and the detailed arrangements for handling the information they collect are not specified. Those details would help explain both the scale of the operation and how its observation role works in practice.

Why Human Operators Still Matter

Lieutenant General Sukriti Singh Dahiya has urged people to dismiss concerns over China's reported deployment of humanoid robots along its borders. His assessment focuses on the people directing the technology and the strategy behind its use.

Dahiya expressed that position with a short statement about the importance of the operator:

the man behind the machine matters.

He explained that the effectiveness of technology depends on the human operator guiding it. His view places the focus on personnel rather than on the appearance or novelty of the machines themselves.

Military observers in neighbouring countries such as India regard the deployment as a natural development in border management rather than a transformation of the balance at the frontier. Their assessment is that technology works through the strategy and people supporting it.

At Fangchenggang, that human role is visible in the planned division of work. Robots handle routine guidance, patrols and observation, while agents carry out checks requiring greater judgment. Remote operators also provide assistance when autonomous work fails.

Where the Experiment Could Lead

Other crossings with Vietnam, the busy border with Laos and inland logistics hubs are potential locations for similar deployments if the Fangchenggang test succeeds. Major city airports and metro stations are also among the possible settings.

At airports in Beijing or Shanghai, humanoid robots could eventually manage passenger flows before security checks. In metro networks serving very large cities, they could move along platforms, answer questions and flag suspicious objects. These are possible extensions of the model being tested at the border.

The Fangchenggang project also tests a form of artificial intelligence that acts through a physical body. Often called embodied artificial intelligence, it combines computer systems with a machine that can move, perceive its surroundings and interact with people.

Travellers who become accustomed to asking a robot for help at a border may come to expect similar assistance elsewhere. The experiment consequently concerns public acceptance as well as traffic flow, inspection work and the durability of the hardware.

China's immediate task is to make the Walker S2 useful in a demanding public workplace. Its larger ambition is to turn that experience into a template for everyday infrastructure, with human personnel, maintenance systems and robotic capabilities working together.

Key Points

• China's Fangchenggang border project uses Ubtech Walker S2 humanoids under a deployment worth approximately 264 million yuan, or US$37 million.
• The robots guide travellers, manage queues, patrol freight areas, scan containers and relay information to human command centres.
• Some units are intended to inspect steel, copper and aluminium manufacturing sites along predefined routes.
• The Walker S2 stands about 1.76 metres tall, weighs about 70 kilograms and has 52 degrees of freedom.
• Its autonomous battery exchange takes approximately three minutes and is designed to support nearly 24 hours of operation.
• Human guards and remote operators remain part of the work, while maintenance, privacy and data collection require attention.
• Ubtech reports 1.1 billion yuan in cumulative Walker series orders and targets annual production of 10,000 units by 2027.
• Other border crossings, logistics hubs, airports and metro stations are possible locations if the Fangchenggang model succeeds.