Last August, Beijing hosted the world’s first ever robotics competition, hailed as the Olympics for robotics, where human-shaped biped robots competed in sports events.

Opening the grand show was a piano piece performed by a human pianist and a humanoid robot developed by Beijing-based start-up LinkerBot, which specialises in making dexterous hands for humanoids.

The LinkerBot robot pianist was equipped with the company’s L6 mode of dexterous hands, designed for refined and delicate operations that enable precise keystrokes comparable with those of a top human pianist.

LinkerBot has been riding the Chinese humanoid sector’s rapid growth in recent years.

The global humanoid market reached 17 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) in 2025, with China accounting for half. A total of 12,000 humanoids were produced in China, a 420 per cent jump from a year earlier, according to a study by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a research facility under the industry ministry.