China approves its first six national standards for humanoid robots, effective April 2027

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation has approved six national standards setting technical requirements for humanoid robots, under Announcement No. 43 of 2026, Gasgoo reported on October 21. The six parts cover general rules, environmental perception, decision-making and planning, motion control, task operation and simulation testing platforms. All take effect on April 1, 2027.

Why it matters: these are the first finished national standards in the field. Buyers, insurers and local governments setting deployment targets in the thousands now have a published reference for what a humanoid is required to do.

What do the six standards cover?

The series is titled “Technical Requirements for Humanoid Robots”. Only one part number has been published in the reports we reviewed: GB/T 48317.2—2026, Part 2: Environmental Perception. Its drafters included Daimon Robotics, a vision-tactile sensing company, alongside Unitree, UBTECH, Xiaomi Robotics and Pujiang National Laboratory. The other five parts follow the same list of functions, from planning and motion control to task operation and the platforms used to test robots in simulation.

The work has been on the books since April 2025, when standards for perception, decision-making and planning, motion control and task execution were approved for development, with the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center leading the motion-control part. General rules and simulation testing are the parts added since.

Where do they fit in China’s standards plan?

China published a humanoid standards framework on February 28, 2026 that lists 52 initial standards across six areas, as we noted in our safety standards explainer. These six are the first to be finished as national standards. More are in the pipeline: a general technical standard for robot teleoperation and a dataset standard for whole-body operation are open for public comment, and a guidance document on intelligence classification for embodied AI has reached the approval stage, according to Gasgoo.

Safety is the gap. The international ISO 25785-1, for dynamically stable industrial mobile robots, was still a committee draft when we last checked in late September. The new Chinese standards define technical capability; they are not a dedicated safety certification for a robot that can fall over when it loses power.

Who will use them?

Procurement first. Shanghai has just set a target of 8,000 humanoids in its factories by 2028, and China’s industry ministry said in July that national humanoid output is on track to top 100,000 units this year. Standards with a fixed start date give buyers a common specification to write into contracts, and give the Chinese makers that helped draft them a head start in meeting it.