Overview

Xiao Nuo is the bionic head from Noetix Robotics in Beijing, unveiled in May 2025. The company explicitly positions it as a human head replica and not as a humanoid. The product line gained prominence when a doppelgänger of actress Cai Ming appeared at the Chinese State Television Spring Festival Gala in 2026, the country's most-watched television event.

Construction

The head features 32 active degrees of freedom, with twelve of these alone in the mouth area. This is unusually high and aims at achieving credible lip movements during speech. Compared to the previous generation, the head volume shrank by thirty percent, and a newly designed neck with three degrees of freedom was added. Noetix uses platinum silicone with a polymer additive as skin. The figure is designed female and has hair.

Technology and AI

The software runs directly on the device, including an Audio2Face procedure, a real-time algorithm for facial expressions, and a multimodal model for emotion recognition. Noteworthy is the depth of manufacturing: Noetix develops motors and driver boards in-house rather than outsourcing them.

Market Significance

The head is manufactured in small series, with Noetix targeting over one thousand units for the current year. A sister model was auctioned in May 2026 for 110,000 Yuan; the company does not disclose a list price. With this, Noetix is among the few suppliers bringing the bionic head from prototype stage into genuine series production.