Chip Manufacturers Demo Local "Shrimp Farming" Live; Human-Machine Symbiosis Taking the Stage | Direct Report from AWE 2026

AI is no longer just a “chat buddy” on your phone; it has truly integrated into every corner of daily life, playing new and unexpected tricks. On March 12, the AWE 2026, known as the “Spring Festival Gala” of the tech industry, grandly opened in Shanghai, once again igniting limitless imagination for the future.

Walking through the exhibition, a wave of technological revolution hits you: AI is moving from the cloud to the ground, empowering PCs, tablets, glasses, audio devices, and other diverse hardware, making smart technology accessible; cutting-edge technologies like consumer-grade 3D printing and textured printing are lowering the barriers to professional creation in unprecedented ways, enabling everyone to become a creator; drones, robots, and various intelligent devices are deeply integrated into daily scenes around life, entertainment, and work.

With continuous iteration of AI technology, a truly “human-machine coexistence” smart life scene is accelerating from dream to reality.

▍Using Domestic Chips to “Farm AI Lobsters” Locally

At this year’s AWE, many AI chip manufacturers demonstrated how to “farm lobsters” locally.

At Lisan Technology’s booth, staff entered “Help me apply for a phone” in the chat dialog, and OA automatically initiated the approval process.

It is reported that the Lisuan eXtreme series consumer cards support OpenClaw integration with local deployment of large models like Qwen3 and Deepseek. According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, the Lisuan eXtreme series consumer cards will debut on JD.com during the 618 shopping festival this year; starting March 17, the Lisuan eXtreme series professional cards will begin accepting enterprise orders.

The Tianshu Tongyang edge computing terminal TY1200 also demonstrated the “lobster farming” process. “Organize the files into a spreadsheet,” the computer automatically finds the invoice files in the specified folder, creating a table listing invoice numbers, dates, vendors, and totals. These “lobsters” deployed locally with domestic chips have the advantage of model operation on-site without token billing pressure.

Liaoqi Intelligent took a different approach by embedding OpenClaw into AI hardware, creating an integrated host, screen, and holographic cabin. On-site, a “Lobster Assistant” waits inside the cabin for user commands.

This intelligent interaction terminal, called ClAW HOUSE (Lobster Cabin), pre-installed with OpenClaw and common SKILLs, is ready to use out of the box, priced at $999 USD, and made its first appearance at AWE.

SenseTime, in partnership with Qujing Technology, launched a local AI Box integrated solution suitable for scenarios with high requirements for data security, private deployment, and compliance, such as finance and government. In this collaborative system, Little Raccoon handles “what can be done,” OpenClaw handles “how to execute,” and Qujing AI Box is responsible for implementation.

Centered around OpenClaw’s intelligent capabilities, the office Little Raccoon will collaborate with Qujing AI Box to launch an integrated deployment solution.

In addition to edge computing power supporting intelligent deployment, the opening ceremony of AWE also announced that domestically developed optical interconnect and optical switching supernodes have entered large-scale commercial use.

Shanghai Yidian, Xizhi Technology, Biren Technology, and ZTE jointly released the LightSphere 128, a commercial version of the optical supernode with 128 cards. Currently, thousands of cards have been deployed.

The LightSphere supernode is based on Xizhi Technology’s pioneering silicon photonics OCS optical switching chip, breaking through power consumption and physical interconnection bottlenecks in a single cabinet, enabling elastic expansion to tens of thousands of GPUs across cabinets; it is equipped with Biren Technology’s “Bili 166L” independently developed high-performance general-purpose GPU liquid cooling module. This module’s BF16 computing power is achieved through multi-chiplet design and CoWoS 2.5D advanced packaging.

Real-world testing shows that, under similar scale, training the DeepSeek V3 671B model with the LightSphere 128 commercial supernode significantly improves training performance compared to non-supernode clusters, with model switching latency as low as microseconds and transmission delays reduced by over 90% compared to traditional electrical switching.

The supernode has successfully adapted to the full series of Zhaoyue Xingchen models (including Step3.5 Turbo), as well as mainstream large models like DeepSeek, Minimax, Kimi, and GLM. The LightSphere 128 commercial version has achieved stable long-term training.

▍Home Appliances Incorporate Large Models

OpenClaw, as an open-source personal AI agent, is further driving the popularization of large models. The home appliance industry is also exploring the integration of large models, intelligent agents, and traditional appliances.

Little Bear Electric and Baidu Cloud announced at AWE a three-year AI strategic cooperation with a scale of 100 million RMB. The focus will be on upgrading AI capabilities for core product categories, including air fryers, health kettles, rice cookers, and other small appliances. Based on Wenxin large model capabilities, the new generation AI appliances will feature natural voice dialogue, intelligent services, and content ecosystems, enabling low-latency voice control and natural human-machine interaction through end-to-end voice interaction (ASR + LLM + TTS).

Li Yifeng, General Manager of Little Bear Electric, stated that the development of AI in home appliances still faces three major challenges: first, cost issues—small appliances have relatively low unit prices, and initial AI application costs can create barriers; second, standardization issues—home appliance scenarios and forms are complex, with different exploration directions among companies, and a lack of unified standards, making large-scale operation difficult; third, industry collaboration—coordinated development across the entire industry is needed to promote continuous AI adoption in home appliances.

“Despite these challenges, the direction of AI in home appliances is undeniable.” Li Yifeng said.

Huawei, ZhiMi Technology, Hisense, and others also showcased new smart home products.

At Huawei’s HarmonyOS Smart Home booth, Xiao Yi Butler 6.0 made its debut, integrating AI large models with deep semantic understanding, capable of executing commands to control home devices. For example, Xiao Yi Butler 6.0 features 3D spatial lighting control, allowing users to say “turn on the lights here,” and the system will automatically adjust based on spatial descriptions without needing to remember device names.

ZhiMi introduced its first embodied intelligent lawn mower, APEX, evolving from a single mowing tool to a versatile, multi-task smart garden assistant. With an extendable robotic arm, it can autonomously perform leaf clearing, trash collection, toy and tool organization, and even automatic watering and fruit picking.

Additionally, ZhiMi showcased the Pocket P10 Ultra, the world’s first 180° flexible foldable technology, which folds down to the size of a smartphone; Airstyle Pro Hi, capable of intelligent hair quality recognition; and the upcoming high-end hair care serum dryer G40.

Micro LED is regarded as the ultimate display technology of the future. At this year’s AWE, Hisense unveiled two groundbreaking products: the world’s first 163-inch four-color Micro LED giant screen 163UX Pro and the world’s first 163-inch 3D stereo display Micro LED giant screen.

Xiaodu Technology launched “Super Power Xiaodu,” a unified AI brain, with smart speakers, screens, “girlfriend” devices, AI glasses, and smart cameras as multi-sensing nodes, building a comprehensive smart ecosystem covering homes, wearables, hotels, and elderly care. For example, using visual large models, Xiaodu can perform intelligent “look-back retrieval” on cameras. Users can directly ask, “How many times did the baby cry this morning?” or “Did the kitten scratch its ears frequently?” and the device will automatically analyze and retrieve relevant video segments based on semantic understanding, providing users with intelligent summaries and highlights.

At the opening ceremony, Qu Zongfeng, Vice President of the China Household Electrical Appliances Research Institute, released the “Smart Home Industry Standardization Roadmap.” He explained that the roadmap establishes an independent sub-system for smart utility within the national standard system, focusing on user-perceivable, measurable, and verifiable safety, comfort, health, and personalized outcome indicators as core requirements. It also emphasizes AI safety regulations, including trustworthiness assessments for hallucination outputs caused by large models, voice assistants, and home management systems. Standards and requirements for large model adaptation are also proposed for both terminals and scenarios.

▍3D Printing, AI Toys, and Robots Captivate Audiences

At AWE, the world’s first consumer-grade textured UV 3D printer, Anker eufyMake E1, was announced for exclusive sale on JD.com. According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, it supports over 300 materials, and with AI-assisted design, users can easily convert artwork or photos into tactile 3D textured objects, such as phone cases, cans, greeting cards, and more.

Additionally, Flashforge released the Creator 5 and CJ270 3D printers, also exclusive to JD.com.

MOVA announced a comprehensive layout in 3D printing, flying cars, and automotive-related sectors. In 3D printing, MOVA will leverage its precision control and AI vision algorithms to expand into home applications through rapid prototyping and personalized customization. In future mobility, MOVA introduced the eVTOL future flying car, exploring new transportation methods in the era of low-altitude economy.

Its self-developed A1 robot from Yishihang set a Guinness World Record at AWE, with 105 successful assemblies, creating a new record for “most sub-millimeter wiring harnesses assembled by a robot in one hour.” Wiring harness assembly is known as the “Goldbach conjecture” of industrial automation. In industries like electronics and automotive manufacturing, this process has long relied on manual labor. In this challenge, based on real industrial wiring harness scenarios, the A1 robot, powered by Yishihang’s general-purpose embodied large model AWE3.0, successfully completed precise assembly tasks repeatedly within 60 minutes.

Yunshenchu Technology showcased the limited-edition “Horse of the Year” product, attracting many visitors for photos.

Qingtian Rental’s booth featured Zhiyuan Robot’s expedition A2 dressed in a floral jacket performing a rap, and the robot “Xinyu” holding a pen, writing “Fortune” and “Prosperity.” Lingxi X2 was dressed in custom attire, performing a lively dance as “Little Bee.”

Magic Atom presented the humanoid robot MagicBot GEN1 designed for industrial scenarios. Standing 174cm tall, with 42 degrees of freedom, its arms can carry loads up to 20kg, and the entire body can bear up to 40kg, with a maximum endurance of 5 hours. Relying on self-developed joint modules, dexterous hands, and the “Atom Universe” large model, GEN1 can transport parts with millimeter precision from point A to B.

Ziguang Zhanrui’s T8300 chip powers the ZTE AI pet “iMoochi,” which integrates emotion understanding large models and five touch sensors and gravity sensors. Under Zhaoxin AI voice technology support, iMoochi can recognize user tone and respond with tail wagging or blinking.

(Article source: Caixin)