The Viral WAIC Crab Robot Is the Result of KingKong Technology's Decade-Long Journey

Charmed by the Crab Robot at WAIC?

The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) was held in Shanghai from July 17 to 20.

Inside this year's embodied intelligence pavilion, humanoid robots played the piano, folded clothes, and made coffee as exhibitors demonstrated what robots can do. KingKong Technology brought a different kind of answer: a small red crab robot named Tiaotiao.

Compact in size, Tiaotiao walks on six legs and dances to the rhythm. At WAIC, it drew crowds of visitors who stopped to watch, take photos, and pose with it.

Before long, the hashtag about being charmed by the WAIC crab robot began trending, with many viewers finding it adorable at first sight.

For KingKong Technology, however, that charm is not merely a cute shell designed by chance. It is a deliberate expression of how we envision the future of home robots:

Before robots can truly enter everyday life, people must first want to approach them.

Visible Charm, Invisible Engineering

Tiaotiao looks small, agile, and playful, but making a crab robot dance with real personality requires a highly precise motion system.

We equipped Tiaotiao with 22 compact tactile servos independently developed by KingKong Technology.

A servo can be understood as a robot's muscle. For small robots, the real challenge is making that muscle compact enough to fit inside a tightly packaged body while retaining the precision needed for stable, agile, and controllable movement.

We reduced each servo to roughly the size of a thumb and integrated high-precision patterned magnetic encoders to create a dual-encoder, fully closed-loop control architecture.

One encoder senses the position at the motor output, while the other senses the joint position after the reduction stage.

This means the servo does more than mechanically follow commands: it gains real-time awareness of both position and force.

It can determine whether a joint has truly reached its target position, detect resistance during movement, and provide finer feedback for walking, grasping, manipulation, and other actions.

If a conventional servo is a muscle that only knows how to exert force, Tiaotiao's tactile servos are more like muscles equipped with reflex nerves.

Twenty-two servos and 44 high-precision encoders together form Tiaotiao's invisible motion nervous system.

Visitors see a small crab dancing. KingKong Technology sees a critical step in the evolution of small robots—from simply being able to move to moving capably and performing useful work.

A Vertical Breakthrough Built on Encoder Innovation

Tiaotiao did not emerge from a sudden creative experiment. It is the natural result of KingKong Technology's growth from foundational technology upward.

Founded in 2017, KingKong Technology has spent nearly a decade focused on magnetic encoders, a core component in robotics. We have invested heavily in precision, miniaturization, reliability, and production engineering.

Today, KingKong Technology holds more than 80% of China's domestic market for humanoid robot encoders. Yet we have not remained solely a core-component supplier. From magnetic encoders to integrated sensing-and-drive servos and now complete products such as Tiaotiao, we have mapped out a clear path of technological evolution:

Foundational components → core modules → end products.

It has not been a fast or easy path. The further technology moves up the stack, the closer it gets to users—and the closer a product gets to users, the less it can rely on specifications alone. An encoder by itself may not move people, but a robot that responds, moves, dances, and creates an emotional connection can make them stop and pay attention.

That is precisely what Tiaotiao represents.

For the first time, Tiaotiao presents nearly a decade of KingKong Technology's foundational work in a form that anyone can understand and want to engage with. As founder Liang Zheng explains: “Many people see Tiaotiao and think it is cute, but beneath that charm is a hard-core technological breakthrough. We spent nearly ten years starting with the precision of a single encoder and solving, step by step, the industry's long-standing challenge of combining miniaturization with high precision. Tiaotiao is the first consumer product to grow from that technology path.”

Bringing Tiaotiao Home: Love at First Sight

Conversations about robots often begin with efficiency, substitution, and productivity. For products designed for homes and individual users, however, another question matters just as much:

Why would someone want a robot in their life?

The answer lies not only in function, but also in emotion. We chose a crab as Tiaotiao's biomimetic form not to create a conventional utility robot, but to establish a lighter, more memorable way for people and robots to interact.

Tiaotiao is compact, vivid, and expressive in motion. Unlike a large robot, it does not create a sense of distance; it naturally feels approachable and companionable. This helps explain why so many visitors at WAIC were first won over by its charm and only then became curious about the technology inside. That is not a simplification of the technology. It is the translation that technology must undergo before entering everyday life:

Turning complex hard technology into a sense of life, companionship, and curiosity that anyone can feel at a glance.

Function defines a product's foundation; emotional value defines a brand's potential. We hope small robots will not be seen only as tools. They can become new members of the family, technology companions for children, development platforms for enthusiasts, and even a gateway to imagining silicon-based life.

The Era of Small Robots Begins with Play

Tiaotiao's debut also marks the official launch of KingKong Technology's consumer strategy.

Starting with a six-legged form, KingKong Technology plans to introduce more compact robots—including quadrupeds and bipeds—for home companionship, care assistance, enthusiast development, research, and education, building a broader ecosystem for small robots.

We believe home robots will not enter millions of households from day one as all-purpose butlers.

They may first arrive as small robots that are fun, appealing, and interactive. People will want to play with them before bringing them home; the robots will create emotional value before gradually taking on companionship, assistance, and service tasks. They will first become something people love, and then a truly useful partner.

This is what we mean by the era of small robots.

It is not simply about making robots smaller. It is about fitting high-performance motion, tactile perception, interaction, and emotional expression into a compact body. Liang Zheng says: “Our vision is to let silicon-based life sense love, carry love, and make loving moments happen. Today, these robots may look like high-performance technology toys that create emotional value. In the future, they will become little companions in the home—keeping people company, lending a hand, and bringing robots truly into family life.”

The Crab Is Dancing, and the Story Is Just Beginning

At WAIC, Tiaotiao became memorable through a single crab dance. For KingKong Technology, however, this was more than a viral trade-show moment. It marked the beginning of our evolution from a business-to-business core-component specialist into a consumer robotics brand.

Deep inside the robotics supply chain, we have spent years solving the question of how robots can perceive motion precisely. Now that Tiaotiao has stepped into the spotlight, we are beginning to answer another question: When robots truly enter people's lives, how should they earn affection, trust, and a meaningful place beside us?

One small red crab cannot represent the entire future of home robotics, but its first sideways step is already distinctive enough to matter.

It has helped more people realize that robots do not have to be enormous, cold, or distant. They can be compact, agile, entertaining, and even a little adorable. A robot can first make you smile with a dance, then reveal through the technology behind it that the future is genuinely drawing closer.

From one encoder to 22 independently developed servos; from foundational technology to a small robot; from being able to move to moving capably and doing useful work; from attracting attention to earning affection.

Tiaotiao is only the first step. KingKong Technology intends to open an era that belongs to small robots.