Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence 北京通用人工智能研究院
Beijing non-profit AGI institute led by Zhu Songchun whose embodied-AI stack includes the TongBrain robot brain and the open-source TongSIM simulator.
The Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI) is a non-profit research and development institution in Beijing, set up in 2020 and directed by Song-Chun Zhu, who returned to China after 28 years at UCLA and also heads the Peking University School of Intelligence Science and Technology. The institute is supported by the Beijing municipal government and the Ministry of Science and Technology, and works with Peking University and Tsinghua University as academic partners. It hosts the State Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence. Its stated mission is to pursue a unified theory of artificial intelligence and build general intelligent agents.
BIGAI's research portfolio spans computer vision, machine learning, robotics, natural language, cognition and reasoning, multi-agent systems, simulated autonomous intelligence, and its own agent operating system (Tong OS) and programming language (Tong PL). Its robotics group works on multimodal perception, cognitive reasoning, task and motion planning, and robot hardware system development. The institute is best known outside robotics for TongTong, a virtual agent it presented in January 2024 as an "AI child" running on TongOS 2.0, followed by TongTong 2.0 in April 2024.
Over 2025 and 2026 BIGAI has pushed this agent work onto physical robots. At the 2025 Zhongguancun Forum (29 March 2025) it co-launched the Tongzhi Brain Alliance with humanoid robot makers including Leju Robotics and Unitree, with plans for a robot data collection factory, technical services for manufacturing and service industries, and an embodied brain that learns navigation and manipulation skills from multimodal human-robot interaction data. At the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum (29 March 2026) it unveiled TongBrain, an embodied-intelligence engine built on a data-brain-cerebellum-body architecture that transfers TongTong's capabilities to multiple robot types through a Real2Sim2Real loop. TongBrain combines whole-body motion control, reinforcement learning, world models and scene understanding, and sits on the TongVerse training and simulation platform, which has supported several humanoid robot competitions in Beijing.
Named robot deployments include humanoid robots developed with Leju Robotics and FAW Hongqi for industrial tasks such as plastic-crate and carton depalletizing and SMT reel unloading, and the dance robot Tong Xiaowu, which runs BIGAI's OmniXtreme motion framework (developed with Unitree) and won the solo dance event at the World Humanoid Robot Games and the IROS dance competition. BIGAI also supports the construction and operation of a humanoid robot training ground in Beijing's Shijingshan District and built a general tower agent with China Tower.
On the simulation side, BIGAI researchers released TongSIM, an open-source platform on Unreal Engine 5.6 with 115 indoor scenes, an outdoor virtual city with traffic simulation, thousands of interactable objects, a Python API, ROS2 integration and experimental MuJoCo and Isaac Lab physics support; its benchmarks cover navigation, multi-agent search, human-robot social navigation and household tasks. The institute also publishes 3D scene understanding work such as SceneVerse++. For RobotToday readers BIGAI is a research-side supplier of robot brains, motion-control algorithms and simulation environments rather than a robot hardware vendor.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
TongBrain embodied intelligence engine
Robot brain built on a data-brain-cerebellum-body architecture that transfers BIGAI's TongTong agent skills to humanoid and other robots via Real2Sim2Real; piloted with Leju and FAW Hongqi.
TongSIM
Open-source Unreal Engine 5.6 simulator for embodied agents with indoor scenes, a virtual city, Python API, ROS2 and benchmarks incl. human-robot social navigation.
TongVerse embodied training and simulation platform
Embodied training and simulation platform underlying TongBrain; used to support humanoid robot competitions in Beijing.
OmniXtreme motion framework
Humanoid motion-control framework developed with Unitree; runs the Tong Xiaowu dance robot that won solo dance at the World Humanoid Robot Games.
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Contact Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence
WEBSITE
https://www.bigai.aiPHONE
+86 10 8541 3685HEADQUARTERS
China
Company Facts
Founded
2020
Primary Role
Research Institute
Company Size
-
Primary Region
Asia-Pacific
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Grant / Non-profit
Funding Total
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Keywords
- Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence
- 北京通用人工智能研究院
- BIGAI
- general artificial intelligence
- TongBrain
- TongSIM
- TongVerse
- TongTong agent
- OmniXtreme
- embodied brain
- robot simulation
- whole-body motion control
- Research Institute
- Software/Algorithm
- Control & Software
- Education & Research
- Manufacturing
- Research Platform
