Daxiao Robotics has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with PetroChina's Shanghai sales company to trial the first fully closed-loop embodied AI robot project in a gas-station convenience store, according to Chinese outlet D1EV. The pilot is already running at the Kunlun Hao Ke convenience store at the China Petroleum Zhenxing station.
How the robot operates
The system is built around Daxiao's Kaiwu world model, with the company's self-developed wheeled, arm-lifting fulfillment robot serving as the execution terminal. Through its "Xiaoman" solution, the robot connects to PetroChina's business systems and can autonomously handle product recognition, picking, restocking, shelf placement, packing and order fulfillment.
When a consumer places an order on Meituan, the order flows through PetroChina's digital platform into the operating system. The robot then picks, moves and packs items in aisles as narrow as 75 centimetres (about 30 inches) and on shelves up to 2 metres (6.6 feet) high, while updating the order status in real time. In the in-store scenario, the robot also assists with retrieving products and preparing orders.
Testing for scale
The two partners plan to run both online and in-store scenarios to continuously test the system's stability under complex conditions such as multiple SKUs, high-density narrow storage and peak order periods, with the aim of improving service efficiency at night and during rush hours. They will also use real operational data to refine the Kaiwu world model and the robot's working capabilities, building toward a modular, quickly deployable solution.
Daxiao Robotics is part of a broader wave of Chinese robotics firms applying embodied AI to retail and logistics. The partnership with PetroChina marks one of the first attempts to deploy such systems in the gas-station convenience-store format, a channel that combines high footfall with limited staffing.
Neither company disclosed financial terms or a timeline for expanding the trial to additional stores.
