Embodied Intelligence Daily · September 25, 2026 (Issue #20)

Today's Highlights

1. AGIBOT's 20,000th embodied robot rolls off the line: The Zhiyuan A3 Ultra was delivered straight to Chimelong, which opened the world's first large-scale embodied intelligence theme park the same day. Tickets from 325 RMB. 2. Direct Drive Tech passed its HKEX hearing; lists September 29: a direct-drive joint module maker rings the bell ahead of most full-robot OEMs. Li Zexiang-incubated, market cap around HK$8 billion. 3. Zibo embodied intelligence robot training ground goes live: A CAICT report released alongside gives a national figure — 70+ training grounds already in operation — as local infrastructure for "exams as validation bandwidth" accelerates. 4. ActiveScale (arXiv 2609.18514): gives VLAs "eyes that turn their head" — camera pose enters the token stream, with 1000 hours of egocentric human-robot mid-training. 5. Analysys releases the China Embodied Intelligence Data Industry Analysis Report 2026: the data industry gets its own standalone report for the first time; bodiless (wearable) collection costs drop to about one-third of real-robot collection.

Detailed Coverage

1. AGIBOT's 20,000th robot: delivered on rollout, tickets as data

• Sources: Jiemian News / Pacific Tech / Sina Finance / Dahe Caibian
• Date: 2026-09-24
• AGIBOT's 20,000th embodied robot — the Zhiyuan A3 Ultra — rolled off the line, which the company says sets a global embodied-robot production record. It was delivered immediately to Chimelong Group and runs常态化 at Hengqin Chimelong Spaceship Park for visitor interaction and guided tours. The same day, AGIBOT and Chimelong opened the world's first large-scale embodied intelligence theme park: 300+ full-line robots on duty, 100+ interaction points, tickets at 325 RMB (355 RMB on holidays), featuring what organizers claim is the world's largest常态化 "human-robot co-performance" opening show and a first-of-its-kind robotic flying-trapeze act.
• Link: https://www.sohu.com (via Jiemian News)

2. Direct Drive Tech lists on HKEX Sept 29: the joint layer gets secondary-market pricing before full-robot makers

• Sources: Zhitong Finance / 163 / HKEX
• Timeline: prospectus 9/21, hearing passed 9/22, listing 9/29
• Direct Drive Tech Limited (Benmo Dongli (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd.) passed its HKEX main board hearing; it lists September 29 under ticker 06731. Offer price HK$21.6/share, 50 million shares issued, market cap roughly HK$7.98 billion. Incubated and early-invested by "DJI godfather" Li Zexiang (founded 2020), the company spans robot power modules and full robots: core products are direct-drive power modules and embodied joint modules, plus wheeled-legged robots Xingtian, TITA, and D1. Reports call it "an important inflection point in the global robot power track" — module sales-led, robot sales secondary.
• Link: https://www.hkexnews.hk (456-page prospectus)

3. Zibo training ground opens × CAICT report: local acceleration of the training-ground network

• Sources: Luwang / Jiangsu Economic News (citing CAICT's Embodied Intelligence Training Ground Research Report 2026)
• Date: 2026-09-24 (Zibo); CAICT report recently published
• The Zibo embodied intelligence robot training ground went into operation, co-built by the Zibo High-Tech Zone with Shandong Zhixing Intelligence, with 40+ robots of various types deployed. CAICT's report gives a national figure: by end of June 2026, more than 70 embodied intelligence training grounds were built and operating nationwide, with 40+ more under construction or planned. Combined with Hangzhou's robot school first "students" earning certificates on 9/24 and Foshan's first national embodied intelligence vocational training center on 9/21, that's three institutional moves in one week.

4. ActiveScale: baking "active perception" into the VLA scaling trio

• Source: arXiv 2609.18514 (v1 9/16, v2 9/19)
• Fixed camera views leave task-relevant information occluded or unobserved. ActiveScale proposes a "model-data-hardware co-design" active perception framework:
• Model: adds historical video observations and explicit camera pose supervision to the VLA (per-frame pose tokens + a lightweight prediction head for cross-view association).
• Data: a 1000-hour egocentric + robot-data human-robot mid-training recipe, exploiting camera motion naturally present in human activity.
• Hardware: the AMP mobile manipulation platform, supporting single-operator teleoperation and co-collection of "viewpoint change + manipulation" demonstration data.
• Experiments show improved success rates on active-perception tasks; ablations verify the respective contributions of pose-aware modeling and egocentric mid-training.
• Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.18514

5. Analysys: China Embodied Intelligence Data Industry Analysis Report 2026 — the data layer gets its own narrative

• Source: Analysys (via vzkoo / hibor)
• Date: 2026-09-19
• The report treats the "embodied intelligence data industry" as a standalone subject: bodiless/portable collection uses wearables to record human motion without a full robot, enabling long-tail-scenario and large-scale data acquisition at about one-third the cost of real-robot collection. It also maps the cost-coverage trade-offs of three routes: real-robot collection, simulation synthesis, and bodiless collection. As a scale reference: Mifeng Tech announced its 20,000th MEgo bodiless collection device off the line on 9/1 — about six months — while AGIBOT took three and a half years to reach 20,000 full robots.
• Link: https://www.vzkoo.com

6. Jia Yueting launches nine robots at once: a new low sample on claim strength

• Sources: Tencent News / QQ News
• Date: 2026-09-20
• Jia Yueting unveiled nine robot products at an FF launch event, the most expensive at 920,000 RMB. Context worth noting: FF has raised about US$3.21 billion since starting car development in 2014, and by April 2026 had cumulatively delivered only 16 FF 91 units (including rentals). On a track record of long-unfulfilled mass production, launching nine robots places the mass-production claim at the "unilateral statement" tier of the claim-strength ladder — this entry is logged for the claim, not the product.

Briefs

• Robot concept stocks broadly up: per 9/23 industry daily, Yunji rose 10.32%; brokerages describe embodied intelligence as shifting "from concept euphoria to value realization."
• Jin'an Embodied Intelligence (HK-listed) held its AGM today, tabling routine resolutions including share issuance mandates.
• Robotics hiring market (Shanghai has the most balanced supply across model/algorithms, bodies, dexterous hands, arms, Sim2Real, data platforms; Shenzhen skews engineering) — the August report circulated this week.
• Old-news interception: in today's search recall, "AGIBOT doesn't lack money, it lacks data" comes from a 9/6 Southern+ piece and "UBTech 1,079 full-size humanoids" from a 9/20 report — neither is today's news, cited only as background.

Editor's Note

This issue's keyword is "definitions."

Three "20,000" figures appear together this week with entirely different meanings: AGIBOT's 20,000 units is full-line cumulative (including wheeled robots, over three and a half years); Mifeng's 20,000 sets are bodiless collection devices (six months); and the global first tier of full-size humanoids sits at UBTech's 1,079 units (thousand-scale industrial delivery). The industry has entered a number-inflation period, and there is only one customs rule: ask for the measurement definition before deciding whether to be amazed. The real increment in the AGIBOT story isn't the "20,000" but "delivered straight to Chimelong" — production validation isn't rollout counts, it's deployed-operation counts: from 9/24, 300+ robots generating tour, retail, and interaction data daily in the park, their reliability audited continuously by daily visitor traffic. Tickets at 325 RMB (355 on holidays) move "tickets as data" from concept to price list — subjects pay to enter and be collected, formally listing the negative-collection-cost tier.

Second item worth independent logging: capitalization of the foundation layer scores again — this time via IPO. Direct Drive Tech's September 29 bell means a joint/power-module maker got secondary-market pricing ahead of most full-robot OEMs. D-Robotics' US$400M Series C (chips + full-stack software), PaXini's 4 billion RMB in two months (tactile), Direct Drive Tech's IPO (direct-drive joints) — the "every OEM must pass through" layer keeps being repriced by capital, moving from primary to secondary markets. Li Zexiang's incubation is itself methodology export: DJI's supply-chain "motor-ESC-flight-controller integration" cost-control playbook translated to robot power modules. Meanwhile, three training-ground moves in one week (Hangzhou certification / Foshan training / Zibo launch) plus CAICT's national 70+ figure turn "exams are humanity's cheapest validation bandwidth" from thesis into standard local infrastructure. On the data side, Analysys's first standalone data-industry report, bodiless collection at one-third real-robot cost, and tickets pushing collection cost negative — the data supply side is being rebuilt across the board. As Peng Zhihui said, AGIBOT "doesn't lack money, it lacks data": as money stratifies toward the layers no one can bypass, data interfaces and measurement definitions are the next boarding pass.