NAVIAI — industrial humanoid robots from Ningbo's Zhejiang Innovation Center
NAVIAI is the humanoid robot product line of the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd., a Ningbo-based joint venture between the Ningbo Municipal Government and Zhejiang University's robotics laboratory. With NAVIAI-i2 (Navigator 2) and the higher-degree-of-freedom NAVIAI-I3, the center is emerging as one of China's most credible entries in the current humanoid robotics and AI boom — the first Chinese autonomous humanoid deployed at an overseas industrial site (Beko's Turkish factory) alongside global peers Tesla Optimus, Figure AI, UBTECH, Unitree, and Apptronik.
- Dec 2023Founded
- Ningbo, ChinaHeadquarters
- NAVIAI-I3Latest flagship (2024)
- ¥450M Pre-AFunding raised
- ChinaCountry
- PrivateStatus
About NAVIAI and the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center
The Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd. (浙江人形机器人创新中心) was formally established on December 21, 2023 in Ningbo's Haishu District as a joint initiative between the Ningbo Municipal Government and the robotics research team of Professor Xiong Rong, director of the Institute of Intelligent Systems and Control at Zhejiang University. Chinese industrial-automation major SUPCON is a primary industrial backer. The center's stated purpose is not to build a laboratory curiosity but to develop a full-stack humanoid robot platform — the mechatronics, the embodied-intelligence "brain and cerebellum," and the supply chain — capable of doing real, precision work on Chinese and overseas factory floors.
The team moved quickly from launch to product. The first prototype, NAVIAI-i1, was unveiled in March 2024 and demonstrated basic bipedal walking plus service tasks such as pouring tea and wiping tables. Just five months later, at the World Robot Conference 2024 in Beijing, the center revealed NAVIAI-i2 — also branded Navigator 2 — the first full-size humanoid in the lineup with production-grade walking dynamics, high-precision manipulation, and 275 TOPS of onboard AI compute. A third, higher-DOF platform, NAVIAI-I3, followed in late 2024 with 82 degrees of freedom and a 2,250-TOPS compute stack, targeting more expressive service and inspection roles.
NAVIAI's commercial trajectory has been unusually fast for a Chinese humanoid startup. In August 2025 the customized NAVIAI-i2 was shipped to Turkey and deployed at the production base of Beko — one of Europe's largest home-appliance manufacturers — making it one of the first fully autonomous Chinese humanoids to work in an overseas industrial setting. In May 2026 the center signed a landmark 2,000-unit order with Jack Technology, the world's largest maker of intelligent sewing equipment, covering apparel-scenario customized humanoids — the first mass deployment of humanoid robots in the global apparel industry. In January 2026 the center closed a Pre-A funding round of approximately 450 million yuan, on top of its existing government and SUPCON backing, and is now scaling out a Haishu-district factory targeting an initial 100 units per production line annually.
The center reports full-stack independent R&D, with roughly 90 percent domestic content across the NAVIAI hardware bill of materials, an industry alliance of 88 Ningbo-based suppliers, and more than 200 supply-chain partners nationwide. Its direct competitive set spans both the Chinese national humanoid landscape — Beijing's Tiangong, Shanghai's Qinglong, Chengdu's Konka, Anhui's Qijiang, UBTECH, Unitree Robotics, XPeng Robotics, and AgiBot — and the global humanoid cohort of Tesla Optimus, Figure AI, 1X, Apptronik, Agility Robotics, and Boston Dynamics that defines the current general-purpose robotics AI boom.
Product lineup: NAVIAI-i1, NAVIAI-i2 (Navigator 2), and NAVIAI-I3
NAVIAI has iterated on a roughly six-month cadence since its first prototype. Each generation has added degrees of freedom, more onboard compute, and progressively production-ready manipulation accuracy — moving from the tabletop demonstrations of NAVIAI-i1 to the 0.03 mm positioning accuracy that NAVIAI-i2 now delivers on Beko's line in Turkey.
NAVIAI-i1 (March 2024) — the research prototype
NAVIAI-i1 was the center's first ambulatory humanoid: 1.5 m tall, 50 kg, and used to validate the basic bipedal locomotion stack, whole-body coordination, and simple manipulation. Public demonstrations included wiping a table, pouring tea, and other short-horizon service tasks with early integration of vision, language, and motor control.
NAVIAI-i2 / Navigator 2 (August 2024) — the commercial pilot
NAVIAI-i2 — also known as Navigator 2 NAVIAI — is the center's first full-size production-grade humanoid. Standing 1.65 m and weighing 60 kg, with 41 degrees of freedom, a 5 kg single-arm payload, 275 TOPS of onboard AI compute, and a demonstrated 0.03 mm positioning accuracy in factory work, it is the platform running at Beko in Turkey and undergoing pilot training at Lenovo's Southern Intelligent Manufacturing Base and Geely (Lynk & Co) auto plants. A wheeled variant of the i2 has also been shown for scenarios where a mobile-base chassis is more practical than bipedal locomotion.
NAVIAI-I3 (late 2024) — the high-DOF flagship
NAVIAI-I3 is the center's most ambitious platform. At 1.8 m tall with 82 degrees of freedom — including a substantially more expressive upper body and dexterous hands — it targets an onboard AI compute budget of 2,250 TOPS, roughly an order of magnitude above the i2. Public demos show human-like gait transitions from walking to running (up to 8 km/h), light basketball drills, opening refrigerator doors, and 0.1 mm accuracy in touchscreen operation. The I3 is positioned for high-dexterity industrial manipulation, quality-inspection, security patrol, and public-space human-robot interaction.
| Model | Year | Height | Weight | Payload | Battery | Actuators | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NAVIAI-i1 | Mar 2024 | ~1.50 m | ~50 kg | — | Electric | Electric BLDC | First prototype; service-task demos |
| NAVIAI-i2 / Navigator 2 | Aug 2024 | ~1.65 m | ~60 kg | ~5 kg / arm | ~2 hr | 41-DOF BLDC | 275 TOPS; 0.03 mm accuracy; Beko Turkey pilot |
| NAVIAI-I3 | Late 2024 | ~1.80 m | — | — | Electric | 82-DOF high-precision | 2,250 TOPS; walk-to-run gait; 0.1 mm end-effector |
Technology stack
NAVIAI's platform is a vertically integrated combination of proprietary mechatronics, multimodal perception, high-throughput onboard AI compute, and a domestically sourced hardware supply chain. Professor Xiong Rong has publicly framed the center's philosophy as "not to create showpiece robots that perform flashy tricks," but to build machines that can carry out real precision work — a positioning that shows up in every layer of the stack.
Perception
NAVIAI-i2 uses a fused multimodal perception stack: surround-view multi-vision cameras, depth cameras, six-dimensional force-torque sensing at each wrist, tactile sensors at the fingertips, and an inertial measurement unit for pose estimation. This combination is what enables the robot to open refrigerator doors, tap touchscreens with sub-millimeter precision, and handle contact-rich assembly and inspection tasks in unstructured factory environments.
Embodied-intelligence "brain and cerebellum"
The center's software architecture separates high-level task understanding — the "brain" driven by a large language and vision model — from low-level whole-body motor control, the "cerebellum." Data-driven skill training uses real-robot teleoperation demonstrations: for the Jack Technology apparel line, NAVIAI robots learned to identify, grasp, and spread fabrics such as polo shirts and denim with positioning deviation held within 2 mm. Semantic navigation and dynamic servo control let the platform operate across 3C coating workshops, chemical laboratories, and automotive assembly floors without task-specific reprogramming.
Actuators, power, and compute
NAVIAI uses electric brushless DC (BLDC) actuators throughout the body — no hydraulics — coordinated across 41 degrees of freedom on the i2 and 82 on the I3. Onboard AI compute runs at 275 TOPS on the i2 and 2,250 TOPS on the I3, sufficient to run whole-body control and language-and-vision reasoning locally rather than depending on cloud connectivity for real-time decisions. A rechargeable battery pack targets roughly two hours of continuous operation on the i2, with cell balancing, thermal management, and multi-stage protection ICs integrated into the pack.
Power management is one of the most demanding subsystems on a machine of this class. Each joint's servo controller must deliver hundreds of watts of instantaneous torque without thermally throttling, driving the use of high-efficiency wide-bandgap semiconductors — SiC and GaN power devices — in the motor-driver stages, tightly matched precision resistors and MLCC capacitors on every gate-drive and current-sense channel, and battery-management ICs capable of monitoring cell health under high-current cycling. With NAVIAI's stated 90 percent domestic-content target, the center has spent significant effort qualifying Chinese and pan-Asian suppliers for these components while maintaining the precision required for 0.03 mm positioning accuracy.
Applications and commercial deployments
NAVIAI is deliberately positioned for industrial and commercial work — assembly, quality inspection, material handling, laboratory workflows, apparel manufacturing, and smart-retail management — rather than consumer or entertainment scenarios. Announced and reported deployments include:
- Beko (Arçelik) — Turkey production facility. Since August 2025 a customized NAVIAI-i2 has performed quality-inspection and manipulation tasks at Beko's Turkish home-appliance plant, including tapping touchscreens at 0.1 mm accuracy and opening refrigerator doors. This is one of the first known deployments of a Chinese autonomous humanoid in an overseas industrial site.
- Jack Technology — 2,000-unit apparel order (May 2026). A strategic partnership with the world's largest maker of intelligent sewing equipment, targeting the first mass deployment of humanoid robots in the global apparel industry.
- Lenovo Southern Intelligent Manufacturing Base ("Lenovo AI Factory"). On-site training for 3C electronics assembly and inspection tasks.
- Geely Auto — Lynk & Co plant. Wheeled and bipedal NAVIAI variants have been reported under factory training at Geely's automotive assembly lines.
- SUPCON, GREE, FOTILE, HAOSEN, Transfar Group. Additional industrial partners across process automation, home appliances, and auto parts.
- Smart retail, chemical laboratories, security patrol. NAVIAI robots have been demonstrated as "smart store managers" retrieving products from shelves, running full laboratory workflows including sampling and pretreatment, and performing security-patrol routes.
The robotics supply chain — where Hybrid Electronics fits in
A modern humanoid robot is one of the most component-dense products ever built. A single NAVIAI-class platform depends on thousands of individual electronic components: precision BLDC motor drivers, high-torque servo modules, IMUs and six-dimensional force-torque sensors, depth cameras and time-of-flight modules, GPU compute boards, battery-management ICs, wide-bandgap SiC/GaN power semiconductors, high-speed board-to-board connectors, precision resistors, and thousands of MLCC capacitors distributed across every power and signal rail. On a high-degree-of-freedom platform like NAVIAI-I3, that count multiplies with every added joint and every additional AI accelerator on the compute stack.
Building that kind of hardware puts enormous pressure on the electronic-components supply chain. Prototype pilots and low-volume production runs frequently hit allocation, EOL notices, and long lead times on the exact parts they need, and R&D and field-service teams routinely have to support older revisions built around semiconductors no longer in mainstream distribution. During the current humanoid robotics and general-purpose robot AI boom, this pressure is amplified: dozens of well-funded teams from Ningbo to Palo Alto are chasing the same short list of high-torque BLDC drivers, precision IMUs, GPU compute modules, and automotive-grade power semiconductors, and franchise stock on many key parts is now measured in months of lead time rather than weeks.
Hybrid Electronics has been sourcing electronic components for industrial and embedded systems since 1995. For robotics teams — humanoid, mobile, industrial, and research — we specialize in finding the parts you need when mainstream distribution can't:
Obsolete and end-of-life parts
Legacy semiconductors, sensors, connectors, and passives that are no longer in mainstream distribution — the parts that keep older platforms running during transitions to newer hardware, and the long-tail items that block a BOM from closing.
Allocated and hard-to-find active parts
High-torque BLDC motor drivers, IMUs and MEMS sensors, SiC/GaN power devices, GPU compute modules, precision resistors, and MLCC capacitors caught in allocation or long-lead times. Send us a BOM or a shortage list — we'll confirm what we can source and at what lead time.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded NAVIAI?
NAVIAI is the humanoid robot product line of the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd., established in December 2023 in Ningbo as a joint initiative between the Ningbo Municipal Government and the robotics research team of Professor Xiong Rong of Zhejiang University. Chinese automation major SUPCON is a primary industrial backer, and the center is headquartered in the Haishu District of Ningbo, Zhejiang.
What is NAVIAI-i2?
NAVIAI-i2, also branded Navigator 2, is the 2024 flagship bipedal humanoid robot from the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. Unveiled at the World Robot Conference 2024 in Beijing, it stands 1.65 m tall, weighs 60 kg, has 41 degrees of freedom, delivers 275 TOPS of onboard AI compute, walks at 6 km/h or more, and has achieved a demonstrated 0.03 mm positioning accuracy in industrial deployments.
Where are NAVIAI robots deployed commercially?
NAVIAI-i2 units have been deployed at Beko's Turkish home-appliance factory since August 2025, making them among the first Chinese autonomous humanoids to work in an overseas industrial setting. Additional pilots and orders include the Lenovo Southern Intelligent Manufacturing Base, Geely Auto (Lynk & Co) factories, SUPCON, GREE, FOTILE, and a landmark 2,000-unit order from Jack Technology for garment production lines.
How much has the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center raised?
In January 2026 the center closed a Pre-A funding round of approximately 450 million yuan (roughly $62 million). Additional capital is provided through backing from the Ningbo Municipal Government, SUPCON, and other industry partners. The center is 100 percent independently owned on the technology side and operates a manufacturing facility in Haishu targeting 100 units per production line annually.
Is Hybrid Electronics affiliated with NAVIAI?
No. Hybrid Electronics is an independent electronic-components sourcing company. We are not a distributor, reseller, or partner of NAVIAI or the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center. All trademarks are property of their respective owners. Hybrid supports robotics developers by sourcing obsolete, allocated, and hard-to-find semiconductors, sensors, connectors, and passives for R&D, prototype, and low-volume production builds.
Can Hybrid help with components for humanoid robotics builds?
Yes. We regularly support R&D and integrator teams with hard-to-find semiconductors, BLDC motor-driver ICs, IMUs and other MEMS sensors, connectors, SiC/GaN power devices, and precision passives for the industrial and embedded boards used in robotics platforms. Send us a BOM or a short list of shortages and we'll confirm availability and pricing.
Trademark and affiliation notice. NAVIAI®, Navigator 2, NAVIAI-i1, NAVIAI-i2, and NAVIAI-I3 are trademarks of Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd. Hybrid Electronics is an independent electronic-components sourcing company and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd. All information on this page is compiled from public sources for educational and reference purposes.