Maxwell smart: new Chinese embodied model tops global AI ranking on physical tasks
Por Zhang Tong — South China Morning Post – News feed
Advertisement Science China Science Maxwell smart: new Chinese embodied model tops global AI ranking on physical tasks
Developed by the CAS Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Industries, it scored 91.9 on the Meta-World benchmark – the highest recorded
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Zhang Tong in Beijing Published: 3:00pm, 1 Oct 2026 A new embodied AI model known as Maxwell – developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Artificial Intelligence for Industries – has shot to first place on the Meta-World benchmark for robot physical tasks.
Maxwell scored 91.9 – the highest ever recorded on the simulation benchmark.
Meta-World was set up by researchers from Stanford University, UC Berkeley and other institutions to evaluate how well robots perform 50 everyday physical tasks. They range from grasping and carrying to opening doors and using drawers.
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The list draws submissions from leading teams worldwide, including Physical Intelligence, Google DeepMind, Alibaba, Meituan, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, the University of Cambridge and the Toyota Research Institute.
Of the latest submissions, from July, second-placed FabriVLA – developed by Shenzhen-based Youibot – scored 90. SUREFlow, developed by researchers at Kyungpook National University in South Korea, was third with a score of 88.3.
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