Shendu Jizhi Brings Embodied AI to Classrooms with PrimeLite Robot

In Hall 8 of Shougang Park, a small robot picks up objects from a table on command. Its shell is 3D-printed, and its movements are clean and precise.

The robot, named Xiaozhuo or PrimeLite, is a lightweight machine built by Shendu Jizhi for education. Founded in May 2025 and incubated by Beijing Zhongguancun Academy and the Zhongguancun AI Research Institute, Shendu Jizhi focuses on physical AI.

Among many embodied AI applications, the company places education high on its agenda: it wants every student to have the chance to build a robot of their own.

Embodied AI has long faced two barriers in schools. Cost is one: industrial robots often cost hundreds of thousands of yuan each, beyond ordinary schools. Safety is the other: robots can become unstable during debugging, raising fears of injury, and repairs require factory turnaround, often longer than a course. Jiang Yiyao, head of Shendu Jizhi's education division, says education must first ensure schools can actually use the technology; without overcoming cost and safety, bringing embodied AI into classrooms remains empty talk.

PrimeLite is not a shrunken industrial robot but a classroom-first redesign. Its shell is entirely 3D-printed, sharply reducing cost. The body uses Lego-like modular assembly, so students can draw blueprints, print parts, assemble wiring, and debug the whole machine. They participate in every step of how a robot 'grows' from parts. The lightweight, slightly brittle shell is safe to touch, eliminating at the design stage the risk of traditional robots that might kick or fly.

On software, PrimeLite offers teaching and teleoperation modes, open-source code, and detailed API documentation. Students build the robot's body and, by running Shendu Jizhi's self-developed physical AI model PhysBrain, enable it to understand commands, complete actions, and interact with people.

The approach has accelerated into classrooms over the past six months. In the embodied AI lab at Beijing National Day School, students assemble robots from parts and learn embodied AI's engineering logic through hands-on practice. One student said robots used to seem like off-the-shelf products, but after building one, the student realized every action depends on structures, circuits, and code; the robot can grasp objects because the student first understood why it can grasp.

In July this year, PrimeLite became the official development platform for the International AI Safety Olympiad ICOA2026, where contestants use it to validate safe AI execution. From middle school classrooms to international competitions, Xiaozhuo's role keeps changing, but the goal remains letting students get hands-on. PrimeLite and its package have completed a standardized embodied AI lab and demonstration courses at Beijing National Day School. Shendu Jizhi is co-building courses with Renmin University Affiliated High School, planning to integrate embodied AI into research-based learning, and cooperating with teams including Li Zhongyu's group at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Rheobot lab at Beijing Jiaotong University to co-develop lightweight robots.

China's 15th Five-Year Plan lists embodied AI as a key future industry, and the AI-plus-education initiative is advancing. Yet schools face concrete questions: where will teaching aids come from, how will teachers teach, and who guarantees safety when students want to tinker? At the education services exhibition during the China International Fair for Trade in Services, Shendu Jizhi presented an education solution bundling curriculum, competition platform, and teacher training.

The company found that schools care not only about the robot itself but also about how to offer courses, how teachers should teach, and how students can compete. Showing products alone or selling robots alone is not enough. Shendu Jizhi began focusing on services: using PrimeLite as a core teaching aid, co-developing textbooks with experienced teachers, designing a complete teaching path from basic operations to innovation projects, providing teacher training and project management tools, and building a competition training platform. Jiang Yiyao says PrimeLite is not just a teaching aid but an entry point for the younger generation to encounter, understand, and create embodied AI.