Hangzhou Opens China’s First Robot School with 30 Students
Hangzhou has established what Chinese state media describes as the nation’s first school dedicated to robots, enrolling an inaugural class of 30 “students” that includes industrial, service and security machines. The robots will undergo systematic “vocational skills” training and must pass capability assessments to earn certificates before entering the workforce, according to Xinhua News, which republished a People’s Daily report on October 3.
A School Built for Machines
The Hangzhou Robot School, located on Fangyun Street in the city’s Yuhang District, was jointly built by the Zhejiang University Robotics Research Institute together with the Zhejiang Institute of Quality Science and leading industry enterprises. It is positioned as a public empowerment platform — the first in Zhejiang Province to systematically provide vocational training and certification for robot bodies. The first cohort “enrolled” in late June 2026.
“A large number of domestic startups hold bodies that can run steadily and jump high, yet they fall on the road from ‘bare machine’ to ‘product,’” said Zhu Shiqiang, dean of the Zhejiang University Robotics Research Institute and founder of the school. “The problem lies exactly in the lack of a brain capable of developing and adapting to scenarios.”
An Admission Exam and a Specialized Curriculum
Before enrollment, every robot must pass an “admission physical exam” — comprehensive testing of hardware performance, functional completeness and algorithm compatibility, explained Cai Jiandong, deputy dean of the institute.
The curriculum mirrors China’s human vocational education system, with four specialized tracks: technical school, medical school, art school and sports school. Training spans five dimensions — ethics and safety, perception capability, motion performance, aesthetic expressiveness and scenario-based practical operation — and each robot receives a personalized training plan. After training, robots undergo capability assessment by an authoritative body and receive a “special skill level certificate,” described as a passport into specific industries that marks the transition from “bare machine” to “product.”
The ‘Boundless Brain’ Behind the Training
At the heart of the program is a self-developed system called the “Boundless Brain,” which Zhu’s team describes as adding a logical reasoning layer to the traditional vision-language-action architecture. According to the 21st Century Business Herald, the brain covers interaction, positioning, cognition, analysis, decision-making, behavior design, evaluation and memory, and sets basic principles governing human safety, ethics and law, the safety of surrounding objects and the robot’s own safety.
“In the past, robots relied on memory to handle scenarios — they could handle familiar scenarios but had no way with unfamiliar ones,” Zhu said. “After adding a logical reasoning layer, robots can deduce physical laws, analyze task constraints, predict the consequences of actions, and then make decisions.”
A showcase example is the guide robot “Xiao Ji.” Half a month before the report, it was a bare machine that could only run and jump. After installing the Boundless Brain, it learned guide narration, greeting interaction, device control and multilingual communication — and can now understand the intent behind unfamiliar visitors’ random questions, autonomously plan routes and complete tours precisely.
Open to the Public
Beyond training, the school doubles as a demonstration space. According to Hangzhou.com, the campus opened free to the public, offering a one-stop experience of elderly-care, companion, housekeeping and cultural-tourism robots. Visitors have encountered attractions including “Pangda,” billed as the world’s first proactive emotional-companion robot for children, which maintains a 37-degree body temperature, and the “Hexuan” robot band, which plays at a level comparable to a human grade seven or eight musician. Booking is available through the “Embodied Intelligence Future Island” WeChat account.
A Growing Industry With Real Obstacles
The school arrives amid a boom in China’s humanoid robotics sector. The 21st Century Business Herald reported that financing in the embodied intelligence sector exceeded 90 billion yuan (about $12.6 billion) in the first half of 2026 alone, even as industry figures openly debate whether a bubble has formed — a debate intensified by a significant market-value pullback at robotics firm Unitree.
Zhu frames the industry into a “scenario camp” and a “technology camp.” The scenario camp forms commercial loops quickly but generalizes poorly; the technology camp pursues stronger autonomy and cross-scenario ability but commercializes more slowly. The school seeks to merge the two — using the brain to accumulate transferable capabilities while real scenarios set tasks, provide data and test results. Zhu says a guide prototype can be on duty in about half a month after entering the school, and facing new exhibition-hall content it can be deployed in less than a day. In industry, the school is training welding robots for shipbuilding that can autonomously locate seams and perform welds after being brought to a site.
Tong Fei, founder and CEO of Zhongcheng Yuansheng Robot Technology Co., Ltd., a “parent” of one enrolled robot, said his company hopes the training will make its robot’s dance performances more human-like and its movements smoother.
What’s Next
The project traces back to December 20, 2025, when the school was officially launched for construction at the Zhejiang Province Robot Industry Development Conference, according to a conference recap by Fulltime Robotics. Independent verification of the “first in the nation” claim remains limited — it originates from Chinese sources and promotional characterizations rather than non-Chinese outlets.
“What they get is not only skill certification, but a set of capability genes that enable sustainable learning,” Zhu said. Whether that gene proves heritable across the industry — and whether certificates translate into reliable, repeatable commercial deployments — is the question the school’s first graduates will ultimately answer.