China’s wearable suit trains humanoid robots with high accuracy

Researchers at China’s National University of Defense Technology, in collaboration with Midea Group, have developed HumanoidExo, a wearable suit system designed to train humanoid robots with high accuracy by capturing real-time human motion. Unlike traditional training methods that rely on videos and simulations—often causing robots to lose balance—HumanoidExo uses motion sensors and a LiDAR scanner to track seven arm joints and body movements, providing robots with precise, real-world data. The system’s AI component, HumanoidExo-VLA, combines a Vision-Language-Action model to interpret human tasks and a reinforcement learning controller to maintain robot balance during learning. Testing on the Unitree G1 humanoid robot demonstrated significant improvements: after training with data from five teleoperated and 195 exoskeleton-recorded sessions, the robot’s success rate on a pick-and-place task rose from 5% to nearly 80%, approaching the performance level of 200 human demonstrations. The robot also learned to walk effectively