Robot Industry Mines the “Emotion Economy”
Bot Telegraph, July 28th – Recently, several emotionally intelligent robot products have begun to enter people’s daily lives. Emotionally intelligent robots refer to robotic products that rely on affective computing and artificial intelligence technology to perceive and recognize human emotions and provide corresponding interactive feedback. Their core function is to achieve emotional interaction between machines and humans.
A report released by iiMedia Consulting indicates that China’s emotional economy market reached 2.7 trillion yuan in 2025 and is projected to exceed 4.5 trillion yuan by 2029. A survey by JD.com shows that over 60% of consumers are willing to pay for emotional value.
To seize market opportunities, several industry leaders are intensifying their efforts in the emotionally intelligent robotics sector. The Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region purchased 35 units of the Fubao KZ100 robot, each priced at 10,000 yuan, deploying them in welfare institutions and community elderly care centers specifically for psychological counseling and daily companionship for the elderly. Haier has launched the “Haiwa” family AI companion robot, which supports intelligent human body tracking and can accurately identify and detect emergencies such as human falls.
The emotionally interactive humanoid robot “Aiqiu·AIQ,” jointly developed by Sichuan Embodied Humanoid Robot Technology Co., Ltd. and the Tianfu Jiangxi Laboratory, has been widely applied in scenarios such as cultural tourism guidance and public services. UBTECH’s Uworld U1 series, equipped with 88 degrees of freedom and an innovative dual-pivot bionic cervical spine, can perform over 90% of basic human movements. Its emotion large model can recognize more than 20 detailed emotional states with an accuracy rate exceeding 90%.
Li Junlan, Research Manager for Robotics and IoT at IDC China, stated that relying on multimodal large models and embodied intelligence technology, robots are gradually acquiring capabilities in emotion recognition, proactive communication, and emotional feedback. Global service robot shipments grew by 44.1% year-on-year in 2025, and the rapid development of the service robotics sector provides a broader foundation for the application and implementation of human-robot collaboration and emotionally intelligent technology.
Tan Min, Chief Brand Officer of UBTECH, said, “The Chinese ultra-bionic robot market is expected to grow to a trillion-yuan scale between 2026 and 2036.” Cong Dachao, Strategic Director of Haier Home Robotics, believes that within the next 3 to 5 years, the industry is likely to achieve deep integration of physiological signal perception and psychological reasoning large models, driving the large-scale implementation of embodied intelligence in companion scenarios.
Source: Bot Telegraph China