Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society 深圳市人工智能与机器人研究院
Shenzhen and CUHK-Shenzhen research institute (est. 2019) building surgical, micro-nano, field and multi-robot systems and the AIRSEAI embodied-AI stack.
The Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society (AIRS) is a municipal basic-research institute founded in 2019 by the Shenzhen municipal government together with The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), which is its main sponsoring institution. It is counted among Shenzhen's ten flagship basic-research institutions and is directed by Professor Xu Yangsheng. The institute is based in the Bantian international innovation block of Longgang District, on the 14th floor of Xinghe World G2, No. 1 Yabao Road. Its stated goals are to carry out basic and applied research in artificial intelligence and robotics, attract international scholars, train young researchers and transfer results into industry, including incubating embodied-AI companies.
Research is organised into five centres. The Robot Systems Center works on special-purpose and field robots; the Medical Robotics Center on surgical and interventional robots; the Micro-/Nano-Robotics Center, led by Professor Yu Jiangfan, on magnetically actuated micro- and nanorobots; the Embodied Intelligence Center, led by Dr. Liu Shaoshan, on software, compute, data and models for embodied AI; and the Swarm Intelligence Center, led by Professor Huang Jianwei, on multi-agent and multi-robot systems. The institute also runs online academic series such as AIRS in the AIR, organised with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society technical committee on multi-robot systems.
Robotic systems that AIRS presented at the 2026 World Robot Conference in Beijing include a multi-scale intraluminal interventional surgical robot, a bronchoscopy robot system with a linearly driven flexible body, a vascular interventional robot whose flexible body is steered magnetically, a bridge inspection and maintenance robot system, embodied robots for electric-power facilities, a heterogeneous multi-robot collaboration system, and a dexterous robot hand with its own control framework. On the software side the Embodied Intelligence Center has built AIRSHIP, an open-source embodied-AI software stack; AIRSTONE, a computing system for robots; AIRSPEED, a data-collection platform; and OmniRL, a foundation model. In August 2026 its open-source embodied-AI framework AIRSEAI, initiated by Liu Shaoshan, was accepted into the Linux Foundation's LF AI and Data Foundation. AIRSEAI provides a modular framework for testing and deploying AI on different robot hardware without vendor lock-in; version 2.0 adds vision-based tactile sensing and an elastic model zoo, and version 3.0 is planned to coordinate heterogeneous robots across distributed sites.
By the institute's own count it has published more than 1,200 journal and conference papers, including 16 in Nature, Science and Cell family journals, filed about 350 invention and utility-model patents with more than 120 granted, and contributed to 11 national or international standards, two of them Chinese national standards with English editions. It reports 14 joint projects and six joint laboratories with companies, two public research platforms and a municipal proof-of-concept centre.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
AIRSEAI open-source embodied AI framework
Modular open-source framework for testing and deploying AI across different robot hardware; v2.0 adds vision-based tactile sensing and an elastic model zoo; hosted by LF AI & Data.
Bronchoscopy robot system with linear-driven flexible body
Research bronchoscopy robot using a linearly driven flexible body for airway intervention, from the AIRS Medical Robotics Center.
Magnetically driven vascular interventional robot
Vascular interventional robot system whose flexible body is steered by magnetic actuation, shown by AIRS at World Robot Conference 2026.
Embodied AI dexterous hand system
Dexterous robot hand with a dedicated control framework developed for embodied-AI manipulation research at AIRS.
Bridge inspection and maintenance robot system
Robot system for inspecting and maintaining bridges, developed by the AIRS Robot Systems Center.
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Contact Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society
WEBSITE
https://airs.cuhk.edu.cnPHONE
+86 755 2351 8114HEADQUARTERS
China
Company Facts
Founded
2019
Primary Role
Research Institute
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Asia-Pacific
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Grant / Non-profit
Funding Total
-
Keywords
- Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society
- 深圳市人工智能与机器人研究院
- AIRS
- Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robots for Society
- AIRSEAI
- AIRSHIP software stack
- bronchoscopy robot
- vascular interventional robot
- micro-nano robots
- swarm intelligence
- bridge inspection robot
- dexterous hand
- CUHK-Shenzhen
- Research Institute
- Surgical Robot
- Control & Software
- End-effector & Grasping
- Cloud & Data
- Surgical
- Education & Research
