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I am thrilled to announce the official launch of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Association (AIROT)!
As a general incorporated organization, AIROT is dedicated to advancing robotics innovation by integrating artificial intelligence and robotics technologies.

In recent years, artificial intelligence — particularly foundational large models such as large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs) — has made explosive progress. These breakthroughs have largely been driven by major corporations with vast financial and computational resources, training models on enormous datasets. However, truly critical user feedback — especially real-world usage experiences from the frontline of elderly care and disability support (such as seniors, people with disabilities, and caregivers) — remains largely confined within these companies, creating high barriers to entry and limiting broader participation. Since 2023, this pattern has extended into the robotics domain. Research on “robotics foundation models,” which leverage large-scale motion data to enable more adaptive and versatile robot control, is accelerating rapidly — particularly for everyday tasks (such as mobility assistance, companionship, and rehabilitation). Yet, just like in AI, this field is currently dominated by a few well-funded enterprises. The global development of general-purpose AI robots faces two major bottlenecks: a severe shortage of high-quality, large-scale datasets and slow progress in data-sharing frameworks between academia and industry.

To accelerate robotics progress through global collaboration, AIROT will focus on two key initiatives:

Developing high-quality universal datasets and building advanced robotics foundation models based on them;
Openly sharing these datasets and models with the global community, fostering a collaborative “robotics data ecosystem” where all stakeholders (researchers, companies, care institutions, elderly users, etc.) can contribute and benefit.

Through continuous data accumulation and iterative model improvement, we aim to naturally accelerate progress and pave the way for more capable general-purpose robots — ultimately enabling AI robots to deeply integrate into critical fields such as elderly care and disability assistance, helping address major global societal challenges like labor shortages, population aging, and strained healthcare resources.

Our most core and important focus is the field of elderly care and disability assistance — enabling AI robots to truly enter the lives of seniors and people with disabilities, addressing real-world challenges such as labor shortages, heavy caregiving burdens, and profound feelings of loneliness, ultimately building a harmonious society where “robots are warmer and more actively involved.” AI robots are moving from concept to real-world deployment, especially across the four key daily-life dimensions of clothing, food, housing, and mobility, delivering targeted, warm, and thoughtful solutions.

In addition, AIROT will actively expand in two supporting directions:

Educational competitions: Organize or co-host youth robotics/AI competitions focused on artificial intelligence applications in education (such as AI-assisted personalized learning, intelligent teaching tools, STEM education innovation, AI ethics and creative projects, etc.). Drawing from global trends, we encourage students to design educational solutions using AI tools, robot prototypes, or open-source models. These competitions will spark innovation, popularize STEM and AI education, and cultivate the next generation of AI talent.
Talent development: Establish open-source communities, training camps, and internship programs in partnership with universities and companies, offering hands-on opportunities in dataset usage, model fine-tuning, robot deployment, and more. Our goal is to equip more young people with “AI + robotics” skills to contribute to high-demand societal areas such as elderly care, disability assistance, and educational innovation, building a sustainable talent pipeline.

Our mission goes far beyond technology development — we are committed to solving real-world problems. Many regions face caregiving labor shortages, elderly loneliness, mobility difficulties for people with disabilities, as well as challenges in educational equity and digital transformation. General-purpose AI robots and AI education applications offer powerful and practical solutions. Through AIROT’s efforts, we aim to fully unleash the potential of artificial intelligence and robotics to create a more sustainable and prosperous future for everyone.

We sincerely invite you to join this pioneering journey! Whether by contributing data, participating in model co-development, supporting competitions, becoming a volunteer, or sharing frontline needs — every step you take will help AI robots better serve elderly care, disability assistance, and education, together shaping the beautiful future of artificial intelligence and robotics!

AIROT — Warm AI, Boundless Care, Robots with Heart!

HAN Mingzhu (Margaret)

Founding President Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Association