Humanoid robots move by your body in China

operate humanoid – In Shenzhen’s hardware orbit, IO-AI Tech lets workers wear VR gear and body-tracking gloves to remotely control humanoid hands and robots—quickly mapping finger movements and even helping test warehouse and convenience-store picking systems.

Forty-five minutes north of downtown Shenzhen, at IO-AI Tech, the first thing I saw wasn’t a robot on a factory line.

It was a person—fully geared up.

Workers wore the company’s VR headsets. handheld controllers. and motion-tracking equipment to remotely control humanoid robots meant for real workplaces like factory floors and convenience stores. The pitch was practical: the robots should eventually stock shelves and pick items out of bins. But the operation also has a second job—collecting training data that could one day let the bots operate more autonomously.

To demonstrate the system, the startup invited me into its offices. I was allowed to control 10 humanoid robotic hands at once. Each hand came from a different company. To make it happen. I wore a custom motion-tracking glove. and the device immediately transferred my finger movements to all 50 robotic digits.

I’m embarrassed to admit that my first attempt with the futuristic gear was getting all 10 hands to flip the bird. Then I calmed down—and the novelty turned into something sharper. My movements landed on the robot hands quickly, and the tech didn’t just send commands in one direction. It also worked in reverse: I was able to feel a ball placed in one of the electronic hands.

The company didn’t stop at hands. It also let me test a system being piloted by a Chinese convenience store chain. With a VR headset and a pair of grippers, I tried picking up boxes of medication from a shelf. The first moments were disorienting. I had to adjust to a slight difference between my movements and those of the robot I could see through the headset. After a bit of practice, the work snapped into rhythm—I was stacking shelves like a robot-boss.

Elsewhere inside the same orbit of testing rooms. the setup looked like a version of Ready Player One—virtual reality headsets and body-tracking sensors. but with the mission turned outward. In one large room, I watched workers using a range of different systems to control diminutive Unitree humanoids. One person walked around with a Unitree robot beside them, and the machine mirrored their movements within a mocked-up apartment.

The operator wore a headset and viewed the scene through the robot’s eye-level cameras, then moved through the steps needed to remove a shirt from a hanger and fold it.

For IO-AI, the core problem isn’t only how to move a robot. It’s how to move many kinds of robots.

The startup develops technology that transfers a person’s movements to different robot forms—an offering that matters because there are dozens of humanoids and robot hands on the China market today. There’s also the mismatch problem. The company’s algorithms have to combine human control with some level of autonomy. since a person and a robot aren’t always the same shape. size. and weight. Without the robot being able to move independently to correct for those differences, it may lose its balance.

In that Shenzhen hardware workshop, the boundary between “operator” and “robot” felt less like a line and more like a dial—one that you can turn with your body.

Shenzhen IO-AI Tech humanoid robots VR motion tracking glove robot hands training data autonomy convenience store robotics Unitree humanoids