China's 'QingTian Rental' Platform Pushes Robots-as-a-Service Model

A new rental platform called "QingTian Rental" has launched in Shanghai, described as the country's first open robot rental service. The platform aims to make robot access as simple as using a shared power bank, moving the industry away from scattered, one-off rental deals toward a broader, platform-based approach.

According to the report, QingTian Rental already covers 50 major cities across China and has linked up with more than 600 professional service providers, pulling together robots from multiple brands and models. Monthly pricing spans a wide range — from 200 yuan for entry-level units to over 10,000 yuan for high-performance machines — serving uses including home cleaning and companionship, mall guidance, warehousing logistics, and industrial tasks. Customers can browse, pay, and arrange delivery through a mini-program or e-commerce listing, cutting out the usual back-and-forth of offline negotiation and contracts.

The article frames this as a Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) model targeted at everyday consumers and small businesses, converting large upfront purchases into flexible monthly expenses. This lets smaller merchants, event planners, and individuals test robots before committing to ownership. For manufacturers, the arrangement reportedly boosts equipment turnover, extends machine lifespans, and feeds operational data back into product and algorithm improvements — mirroring practices already used by international RaaS providers offering monthly rentals, remote monitoring, and cloud updates.

The piece also points to related rental activity elsewhere: daily rates for Yushu humanoid robots reportedly reach 20,000 to 50,000 yuan with bookings extending months ahead, while secondhand platform Xianyu lists over 200 robot rental offers, ranging from 2,000-yuan basic reception units to 10,000-yuan-plus dance robots per day. This is described as evidence that demand is moving beyond novelty use toward recurring needs at events, exhibitions, and educational programs.

Supporting this trend, the global service robot market was valued at roughly 25 billion USD in 2023, with annual growth exceeding 20% between 2019 and 2023, while China's service robot production has stayed above 9.2 million units annually since 2021. The article suggests platforms like QingTian Rental could help turn this fragmented rental demand into standardized, scalable infrastructure for the wider robotics industry.

Sources: Boardor — original article.