At the first Beijing Yizhuang Robot Warriors Challenge, the humanoid robot Tiangong 3.0 from the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center took the world's first all-autonomous championship, and the next day Honor's self-developed humanoid robot "Lightning" won a humanoid half-marathon in 50 minutes 26 seconds, breaking the human record. Both robots contain parts made in Dongguan, the "world factory." The city is now home to more than 7,000 robotics-related companies, third in China, and produced 26,300 industrial robots in 2025, up 6.9% year on year. The Dongguan tax bureau recently issued measures to support new manufacturing advantages, focusing on AI, low-altitude economy, robotics and intelligent terminals.
Whether industrial or humanoid, a robot's agile movement depends on flexible "joints." Nugear Intelligent Transmission (Guangdong) Co. specializes in robot joint actuators; its products have entered the supply chains of several high-end robot makers and were included in the 2024 China Humanoid Robot Industry Blue Book. General manager Cao Xiaolin said demand for key components keeps rising and the firm keeps increasing R&D spending, adding that the local tax authority uses tax big data to monitor R&D trends and helps the company clarify labor-hour and material data and prepare filings for complex R&D projects. Over the past three years the company's R&D expense super-deduction exceeded 13 million yuan, equivalent to more than 2 million yuan in tax relief. In the 2024 corporate income tax settlement, more than 9,400 Dongguan enterprises enjoyed the super-deduction, totaling over 85 billion yuan.
Startups are also emerging in niche tracks. At the 2026 Guangdong provincial city football super league opening ceremony, Benmo Technology unveiled the world's first split-and-merge wheeled robot. Growing from a Dongguan startup into a leading domestic robot power module maker in just over five years, it has extended from upstream technical solutions to downstream end products, delivering millions of power modules in 2025 and serving hundreds of robotics firms across industrial inspection, logistics, smart parks and education. While Benmo focuses on "feet," Moxian Technology (Dongguan) works on the robot "hand": since 2021 it has specialized in flexible tactile sensors, applying them to smart home, healthcare and IoT consumer electronics. Embedded in a humanoid robot's fingers, its flexible pressure sensors provide pressure-distribution feedback that helps the gripper control force precisely and confirm whether an object has been grasped effectively.