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Midea Group unveiled its latest humanoid robot designed for household chores, alongside a strategic plan for embodied intelligence during its 30th Technology Month and the Third Visionaries Conference, held in its hometown of Foshan in Guangdong Province on October 31.
At the event, the company showcased its third-generation humanoid robots, including models from the Mei Luo series aimed at industrial applications, and the Mei La series created specifically for household assistance. The Mei La robots are capable of operating various home appliances such as washing machines, microwaves, and refrigerators. The newest version, the Mei La X, is a compact bipedal robot, optimized for smaller living spaces.
While home robotics are expected to become more refined in testing environments over the next two to three years, it will take longer before they are fully ready for commercial deployment, according to the director of the company’s artificial intelligence research division. The company is actively working to improve its smart appliance ecosystem, focusing on enhancing user interactions and enabling collaboration among multiple agents. This will be achieved through the creation of a new behavioral data network powered by autonomous learning and decision-making.
The main areas targeted for embodied intelligence applications in household services include storage, laundry, cooking, cleaning, and caregiving. Currently, research is concentrated mainly on storage and laundry tasks. The primary objective is to ensure robots can reliably perform specific functions, such as removing clothes from the washing machine, folding and flattening laundry, or retrieving and recognizing ingredients from the fridge, then organizing them appropriately.
Regarding industrial applications, the company is developing a decision-making central system—often called the “factory brain”—along with embodied intelligent robots within manufacturing facilities. This centralized system is capable of managing various intelligent terminals, including humanoid robots and AI-powered glasses.
During the conference, the company introduced the Mei Luo X, a bipedal robot with a high degree of mobility, designed to better meet the demands of complex industrial environments. The company maintains a diverse industrial presence, with its AI research division contributing to advancements in building technologies, robotic systems in collaboration with Kuka, and healthcare initiatives.
The company acquired the German industrial robot manufacturer Kuka in 2016 to expand into robotics, and since then, Kuka has shipped over 100,000 industrial robots. Over the past three years, the company invested upwards of CNY 43 billion (approximately USD 6 billion) in research and development. In the first half of this year alone, R&D expenditure increased by 14%, reaching CNY 8.8 billion (around USD 1.2 billion).
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