Japan made one of the world's first humanoid robots. Now it's buying from China

HMHSeptember 28, 2026

Japan Airlines, Honda, and Hitachi are deploying Chinese-made humanoid robots to solve a labor crisis. And the country that gave the world ASIMO is now watching its domestic robotics industry scramble to catch up.

In 2000, Honda unveiled ASIMO and the world's idea of what a robot could look like changed overnight. Bipedal, 130 centimeters tall, able to walk upstairs and wave. For a generation of engineers in China, Japan, the US, and Europe, ASIMO was the benchmark: the proof that humanoid locomotion was possible.

Honda discontinued ASIMO in 2022. This spring, Honda Trading Corporation signed a strategic partnership with UBTECH Robotics, the Chinese company that now makes some of the most commercially deployed humanoid robots on the planet.

That's not an ironic footnote. It's a data point about how quickly the center of gravity in humanoid robotics has shifted.

The deals

Honda Trading — the logistics and supply chain arm of Honda Motor, with 56 branches across 19 countries — partnered with UBTECH and its logistics unit UQI Robotics in April 2026. The scope: humanoid robots and autonomous vehicles for automotive manufacturing and warehousing.

The company whose founder sparked China's humanoid industry is now helping China's humanoid industry get into automotive supply chains globally.

Japan Airlines deployed Unitree G1 and UBTECH Walker E robots at Haneda Airport the same month. Tasks: aircraft towing, baggage loading, cabin cleaning. The trial runs through 2028, and JAL President Yoshiteru Suzuki called it an effort to "verify the potential for humanoid robots to achieve labor savings." Japan received a record 42.7 million international visitors in 2025; in the first two months of 2026 alone, 7 million tourists arrived. The airports need help they can't find from the domestic workforce.

Hitachi Group partnered with UBTECH in May, deploying Walker S2 for operational testing across elevators, building systems, healthcare applications, and semiconductor equipment logistics.

Three of Japan's most established industrial names in automotive, aviation, and industrial infrastructure each signing partnerships with Chinese robotics companies within a few weeks of each other.

Why Japanese companies are buying Chinese robots

Japan's labor problem is severe and getting worse.

The working-age population has been shrinking for years. Factories are running short shifts. Logistics companies are canceling routes for lack of drivers. Airports are strained under tourist loads they can't staff. By the 2030s, METI estimates Japan will need an additional 2.4 million manufacturing workers that the domestic workforce simply won't provide.

Domestically developed humanoid robots are not commercially available at scale. Toyota and Honda have robotics programs, but they're R&D efforts, not shipping products.

IEEE Spectrum's Tim Hornyak reported in July that Japan risks "losing its legacy" in humanoid robots ... the country that led the world in research for two decades is now a customer rather than a supplier.

The price gap makes Chinese robots almost irresistible. A Unitree G1 costs roughly $13,500 in its basic variant. That's 130 centimeters tall, 35 kilograms, two-hour battery, top speed of 2 meters per second. For a Western equivalent — if one even existed at commercial scale — you'd be looking at 3-5X that price.

(Of course, more capable Unitree models cost much more.)

At JAL's labor problem and Unitree's price point, the math writes itself.

China's robots also integrate without requiring infrastructure modifications, iterate quickly, and are shipping in volume now. Chinese humanoid companies shipped more than 40,000 units in the first half of 2026: roughly 97% of global humanoid shipments.

The country that started this

Japan's industrial robot industry still dominates globally in precision components: Harmonic Drive Systems for the actuators, Nabtesco for the gearboxes, Murata for the sensors. Chinese humanoid robots depend heavily on Japanese parts. The interdependence runs both ways.

But the system-level product — the robot you can actually buy and deploy — is now overwhelmingly Chinese. Japan makes the joints. China makes the robots. And now Japan's largest corporations are buying those robots to handle the jobs their own workers can no longer fill in sufficient numbers.

ASIMO was the inspiration. UBTECH, Unitree, and Agibot are the market. Japan bet on precision component mastery and won that race. It's now watching China win the integration race — and adapting, pragmatically, by buying what it can't yet build.

Whether Japan's new national Noetra physical AI consortium can change that balance by 2030 is a genuinely open question. Right now, at Haneda Airport, the answer is Unitree G1.

Japan is investing in physical AI and humanoid robots, and American robots will probably hit the market in scale in 2027.

So it will be interesting to see where this all develops.