Chinese Company Making Robots Cheaper, Renting Them Out
Chinese robot industry focuses on affordability and accessibility
BEIJING, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 26th Aug, 2026) China’s robot industry has been working to make robots more affordable, smarter, and capable over the past few years. At this year’s World Robot Conference in Beijing, some companies explored another approach: renting them out.
One household service robot maker, interviewed by China Economic Net at the conference, offers a robot for 3,000 Yuan (~$446) per month, despite the machine costing over 20,000 Yuan to build. They initially provided one-day trials and weekly rentals of around 700 Yuan before settling on the monthly model. The company currently doesn’t offer long-term contracts, with their booking schedule already fully booked until December due to strong demand, allowing robots to circulate among more households on a monthly basis.
This may seem like a small consumer financing experiment; however, it signifies an intriguing aspect of the robotics industry’s efforts to address a challenge beyond technological advancements: persuading customers to adopt evolving machines.
China is already a significant robot manufacturer, with the National Bureau of Statistics reporting 635,056 industrial robots produced in the first seven months of 2026, up 28.5% year-on-year, and service robot output reaching 12.14 million units, up 12.2%. July’s industrial robot output further rose by 30.2%. The question is no longer about China’s ability to manufacture robots but whether enough customers can find a compelling reason to use them.
According to Shanghai Pudong government figures, China’s robot rental market exceeded 1 billion Yuan (~$148 million) in 2025, and iiMedia Research forecasts it to surpass 10 billion Yuan this year—a tenfold increase.
Robot Rentals in China: A Growing Trend?
So, why would someone rent a robot? For hotels, the answer might not involve owning one at all.
Mark McGauley, founder and CEO of Norway-based Autobot Rentals, described a model where his company buys service robots from Chinese manufacturers and rents them to hotels while handling installation and maintenance. This approach offers several advantages: spreading the cost of hardware and removing technical complexities like mapping buildings, connecting robots to elevators, and maintaining them.
"Rentals is a stage in the commercialization process," McGauley stated. He believes robots may be easier to rent than sell as they are still complex for customers to understand and operate, allowing rental companies to provide installation, maintenance, and support, turning hotels into robotics operators without the need for in-house expertise.
This concept is known as Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) and is gaining official recognition. In June, the Ministry…
